Three-Martini Lunch (23 page)

A
s angry as I was with Cliff, it was awful tough to remain angry for very long. My inability to hold a grudge had something to do with my overwhelming sympathy, and my sympathy had to do with certain things Cliff had told me about his father. After we made love for the first time, he'd relayed a story from his childhood. It was the middle of the afternoon and we were lying naked on the mattress in his studio, holding each other, breathing in the scent of each other's skin. Cliff was always funny about his father and, knowing Mr. Nelson, I thought I knew why. But when he told me this particular story, I understood his mixed-up feelings went much deeper than anything I'd previously assumed.

Cliff told the tale in fits and starts. It was obvious it represented a tender spot; I worried if I said anything—even just a single word out loud—he wouldn't continue. So I simply listened, and stroked his arm to reassure him. I had to piece it together in my mind later, smoothing out the rough edges when Cliff left a sentence here and there
unfinished, usually because his voice broke up and he needed to collect himself.

I was ultimately able to piece together the following account:

•   •   •

O
ne day in April when Cliff was eleven years old, he and his friends caught a case of spring fever and decided to play hooky. As young boys enrolled in a private school in Connecticut, playing hooky meant taking the train into Manhattan, sneaking past a doorman, and going upstairs to one of their families' empty “city apartments” with the idea to raid the liquor cabinet.

The boys had only just arrived in Grand Central and were standing outside, pooling their change for a taxi, when Cliff looked up to see his father striding down the sidewalk. Cliff's first reaction was one of panic. His frightened brain jumped to the conclusion his father had been alerted to his absence from school and had come down to the station to find and punish him. He dashed behind a newsstand to hide. But as he watched his father turn and duck down the stairs and into a subway station, he realized his father was not looking for him at all. To the contrary, it was clear his father was oblivious to Cliff's presence.

He couldn't think of where his father could possibly be going. The only appointments Cliff's father generally took outside the office were lunches, but it was well past the lunch hour, and his father was not one to take the subway when he could take a taxi. Cliff's curiosity overcame him, and he decided to pursue the mystery. Cliff's friends attempted to dissuade him, but Cliff had made up his mind.

Cliff snuck down the subway stairs after his father, hiding behind trash bins and other passengers waiting on the platform. When the train came, Cliff waited for his father to board and then darted into the car behind. He positioned himself so he could make out his father's shape through the windows between cars, but where his father would be unlikely to
glimpse Cliff in return. But as the train rocked along the tracks over the Manhattan Bridge and into Brooklyn, an uneasy feeling came over him. It dawned on him that if his father had a secret, he wasn't sure he wanted to know it.

When his father finally got off at Twentieth Avenue in Brooklyn, Cliff followed him, and the mystery grew even more perplexing. Trailing at a distance, Cliff crept along as Mr. Nelson made his way to a park where a Little League game was going on. He watched as his father climbed up into the bleachers, took a seat, and proceeded to cheer on the game. Cliff was stumped by this turn of events. Why on earth would his father take the train all the way out to Brooklyn to watch a Little League game? All too soon, he had his answer. The game ended and one of the players—the shortstop who had notably hit the game's one and only home run—ran off the field and directly up to Cliff's father. Cliff squinted to get a better look. The boy seemed to be close to Cliff's own age, but where Cliff was rather small, this boy was rather big. He was tall, with dark hair and olive skin. In fact, everything about the boy's origins alluded to some kind of Mediterranean tribe, save for a pair of very pale, Nordic-looking eyes.

Cliff continued to watch. Cliff's father clapped the boy on the shoulder with firm enthusiasm once, twice, and then a third time. They began to descend the bleachers, and it was clear they intended to depart together. Cliff felt nauseated. He wished he hadn't gotten on the train to Brooklyn; he was convinced his father had taken up some kind of unnatural interest in this young boy. That is, he was convinced this was the case until he drew close enough to hear his father say, “C'mon, son, let's get you home to your mother.”

At this, Cliff was absolutely perplexed. He followed them. They left the baseball diamond and walked several blocks, turning this way and that, crossing avenues, until they came to a redbrick row house. A woman was standing on the porch, leaning in the open doorway and watching the street as she blithely smoked a cigarette. Cliff ducked behind a cluster of
garbage pails left on the curb and observed the woman from afar. She had an ample figure and small waist. A prominent mole on her left breast peeped out from the low neckline of her tight blouse, and she had short black hair. Two perfectly rounded curlicues were plastered to her face, framing a pair of high cheekbones and red-painted lips. There was something beautiful about her, but also common, like an advertisement for cheap cosmetics.

Upon seeing Cliff's father and the boy from the baseball field approach, she twisted her lips into a sort of sideways smile and called out, “See, Johnny? What'd I tell ya? I
told
ya he'd be at your game.” The tall dark-haired kid nodded, and his chin jutted out in a proud way. He held back a grin, his face straining to remain manly and stoic. The woman moved out of the doorway to let him pass, and “Johnny” ran inside.

“Well . . . aren't you a sight for sore eyes, Dolores,” Cliff's father said. Ascending the stoop that led into the house, he gave her a kiss on the cheek. Looking bored and amused at the same time, she rolled her eyes and winked at him.

“Depends on who's doing the looking,” she replied. Then, as if remembering something she had forgotten, she straightened up and was all business.

“C'mon inside,” she said, throwing her cigarette down and stamping it out with the toe of her right pump. “I got sauce on the stove.” Cliff's father went in the house. She followed him in and shut the door.

Cliff rose from his hiding place behind the garbage pails and stood there, bewildered. After several moments passed and no one reemerged, he drew even closer, taking a position near a shrub directly across the street. There, Cliff waited and watched. The row house was two storeys, with a little porch and a bay window. Within the bay window was some kind of dining room and Cliff had a plain view of Dolores, Johnny, and his father all sitting around a cramped table. Dolores set the table with some kind of meal that appeared to consist of spaghetti and green beans. There
was something peculiarly intimate about the scene that bothered Cliff. He watched as his father reached over and rumpled Johnny's hair just as Dolores reached to pull the curtains shut. It felt as though all the air had gone out of Cliff's lungs. Crouched in the shrubs like an alley cat, his muscles cramped; he didn't move, he barely breathed. A neighbor parked an old-model Oldsmobile onto a nearby curb and walked right past Cliff, not seeing him. Dusk crept in.

Eventually, the downstairs light was replaced by an upstairs light. Then that, too, clicked off. By that point it was quite late. Birds that had been roosting had fallen silent, disappearing to wherever it is birds go after they roost. The scanty handful of stars bold enough to show their faces in the Brooklyn night sky appeared, crickets chirped, and some distance away on the main streets horns were honking, teenagers were cruising and hollering to one another. After the light on the second floor went out, Cliff waited another hour more.

Finally, Cliff stood up on stiff knees, realizing for the first time he hadn't a clue how to get all the way back home to Connecticut. With a great sense of dread he realized he would have to phone his mother. He was likely in a lot of hot water. She might even be aware he hadn't been at school. But funnily enough, at that moment, he wasn't especially worried about himself or whether he could evade punishment. He was caught in a different predicament. He was worried about his mother's feelings, about how he would explain what he was doing in Brooklyn, and about how she might react.

He stood outside a phone booth in front of a diner, dancing from one foot to the other and changing his mind several times until a middle-aged woman with a stringy neck and a smoker's voice leaned out the door of the diner and yelled, “Hey, kid, that ain't a urinal, so don't even think about it!” Cliff gave her a look and treated her to his middle finger. Then he promptly entered the booth, lifted the receiver, and placed his call.

His mother drove all the way from Greenwich to pick him up. When
he mentioned Brooklyn on the phone, she hadn't sounded surprised, nor had she prodded him for an explanation. She simply asked the name of the diner and the intersection where it was located. The family employed a driver named Leonard, but she didn't mention him and Cliff understood she was making the drive herself and coming alone. Too tired at that point to be surprised anymore, Cliff was merely confused and disappointed by this turn of events. All things considered, he couldn't really complain; his mother was coming to get him and she hadn't threatened a punishment for his having played hooky, and that would have to be enough of a comfort for the time being.

It took her a long time to get there. Cliff sat on the curb for hours, hungry from having not eaten all day, smelling the glorious greasy scent of grilled cheese sandwiches, realizing for the first time that day that he hadn't eaten. Strange emotions overtook him. First he was angry with his father, and then, inexplicably, his anger veered off in the direction of his mother. As the minutes ticked by, he grew angrier and angrier, until eventually he was seething with fury. But his anger vanished the minute she pulled up to the curb. She was dressed in only a housecoat, her thin face drawn and pale, and it was obvious she had applied cold cream to her skin earlier that evening and then wiped it off in order to make the journey. She appeared fragile to Cliff, and for the first time he comprehended the fact of his parents' mortality in a manner that had evaded him throughout his younger years. She leaned across the bench seat to lift the lock on the passenger door of the Hudson and he climbed in. Wordlessly, they drove back to Greenwich, whereupon she parked the car in the garage, went into the house, and climbed the stairs to go to bed.

“Good night, Clifford” was the sole sentence to escape her lips.

A letter of excuse written in his mother's impeccable penmanship was waiting for him on the breakfast table the next morning along with his usual soft-boiled egg. It read: “Please excuse Clifford's absence. He was ill yesterday.” When his friends asked him whether he had dispelled the
mystery of what his father was up to, he shrugged and, shaking his head, said, “I lost him.” His friends poked fun at him, calling him a crummy detective. For a few days he became their lackey, until eventually some other boy made a gaffe, and their attentions were drawn to the new victim. Cliff and his mother never spoke about what had happened.

•   •   •

“
S
he knew,” Cliff said to me as we lay on the mattress. “She knew all along that he had a girl on the side. That I had a
goddamned brother
, for Chrissake . . .” He paused. We had our arms wrapped around each other; I felt his jaw clench as he swallowed. “Once, over the breakfast table, she said to my father, ‘You've spent a lot of nights sleeping in the city lately, Roger. I think you ought to cut back.' Just like that! Right in front of me, like we didn't both know exactly where he'd been spending his nights.”

I couldn't think of what to say, and I knew, on instinct, that Cliff would rather I say nothing at all. So I simply went on stroking his arm, letting him know I was awake and listening.

After we were married, I asked Cliff once if he wouldn't like the chance to talk to his half-brother someday. They were, after all, related. And nearly the same age. But by that point I knew Cliff well enough . . . I should've guessed already what his answer would be.

“What for?” he asked, a sneer slowly soaking into his features. “I tell ya one thing . . . if I ever did, I would be sure to knock the bastard's block off, the lousy no-good pretender.”

37

I
guess Eden and I were true newlyweds because we went from one day having a fight and not being able to stand each other to the next day me doing something as sweet and simple as bringing her a packet of daisies I'd bought for twenty-five cents at the newsstand and suddenly the two of us couldn't keep our hands off each other. I'd had some valid points during our big argument and I didn't think I ought to give them up, but there was one thing I was awful sorry about and that was bringing up the subject of Eden's name. I could tell it had her rattled. If she knew me at all she ought to know I would never rat her out but in any case I felt pretty lousy whenever I remembered that part of our fight and I decided I would lay off Eden for a while about the whole business of slipping my manuscript to My Old Man.

One Saturday Rusty turned up unannounced per his usual habit while Eden and I were busy making love under a shower of rare but glorious afternoon sunshine. Of course we knew when the buzzer sounded it was Rusty and we also knew we had to stop what we were busy doing and
answer it or else there would be consequences. I extracted myself and pulled my pants on begrudgingly, knowing full well there are only so many afternoons you get in life when you are young and so is your wife and you still have love between you and the sunshine pours in through the windows in such a way that the very word
generous
seems to hang in the air. But since Eden wasn't going to slip My Old Man a manuscript, I needed to get to Rusty's boss now more than ever and there were always consequences if you made Rusty cross so down I went to the stoop. It turned out there were consequences anyway, because when Rusty came trudging up the creaking wooden stairs and into the apartment he took one look at the sticky sheen of our faces and at the bedsheets that were now twined into a thick vine and dangling off the mattress a little like the braid of Rapunzel's hair and he knew exactly what had been going on just minutes prior.

Whenever someone else was making love or balling someone it put Rusty in a foul mood and a small but devastating tantrum was sure to follow. I didn't completely understand the reasons for his foul mood but it was as if he believed there was only a set amount of sex in the world and whenever someone else used some of it up they were taking away from the stash that was rightfully his. He paced around our apartment like an aggravated jungle cat. Eden made him a melted cheese sandwich on the hot plate but he refused to take a single bite of it and instead kept complaining about how his shirt had gotten wrinkled on the cab ride over because the driver had been so lousy he'd been forced to hunker down in the backseat to avoid flying out the cab window whenever the driver made one of his death-defying swerves into traffic. I almost asked how Rusty had managed to pay the taxi without someone to spot him the money but I held my tongue. Finally, Eden offered to iron it for him and he sighed and took his shirt off as though acquiescing to a great favor.

The sight of Rusty sitting at the kitchen table in his undershirt with his narrow shoulders and skinny arms and his chest so soft and saggy was
enough to make me gag but I did not have to stomach it long because Eden was an efficient ironer and when the shirt was done Rusty whipped it back on and stood up and when he got up he yelled, “Good Lord, I don't know how you people can stand it in here; it positively reeks!” Then he declared we all needed to get outside and do something. Eden and I changed our clothes and soon enough we were outside standing on the curb, helping Rusty hail a taxi. The afternoon sunshine was all gone now; twilight had set in and all the electric signs were beginning to glow like embers against the ashen sky. When a cab finally pulled over to let us in, Eden gave me a look that said:
Of course this is another thing we're going to have to pay for with money we don't really have because we both know perfectly well he's not going to offer to pay for it.
I shrugged as if to say:
What do you want me to do about it?
She sighed and I sighed and we got in. I think we were both especially compliant that evening to Rusty's demands because of the big fight we'd had about my manuscript. If Rusty ever got around to giving my work to the big important literary agent the problems between us would be solved and we would never fight again, so we figured it couldn't hurt to give him what he wanted.

It turned out Rusty didn't really want fresh air because what he really wanted was to smoke some tea, so we ended up giving the driver an address in Harlem because in those days the tea was plentiful in Harlem—so much so that if you didn't have any money to buy, sometimes you could just get out and walk the streets and breathe the air there to get good and stoned. I didn't mind so much going to Harlem, because once up there we could check out some of the jazz joints and it was always a good time to go hear the Negro musicians blow as only the Negro musicians could.

When we got to Harlem we found both the tea and the jazz in the same place. It was early still, so the nightclubs hadn't filled up yet and we had a table to ourselves. The waiter told us in order to see about the tea we'd have to ask at the bar and of course Rusty wasn't very well going to do this part and so it was all up to me. The bartender directed me to a
stockroom in the back of the club just past the men's toilet and once there I stood in front of a pair of decommissioned urinals until finally a heavyset mulatto who was all frowns abruptly pushed through the door and without a single word or twitch of expression took my money and handed over the tea and shuffled out just as directly as he had come in.

When I got back to the table Rusty and Eden were discussing something and when I sat down Rusty took the tea from me and abruptly changed the subject by asking me what did I think of the fellow sitting at the bar. After all the cloak-and-dagger with the tea I was a little annoyed to watch as Rusty started rolling a marijuana cigarette right at the table for everyone to see but I decided to ignore this and oblige his request and looked over at the bar. There were two light lemony-skinned colored girls, one fat man so big his haunches concealed the barstool supporting him, and one athletic-built Negro in a turtleneck and horn-rimmed glasses. I assumed Rusty meant the young athlete.

With a start, I realized the young man we were staring at was Miles.

He must've felt our eyes on him because just then he turned and looked in our direction. I waved and he gave a tight nod and smile. It was funny seeing him at that bar. I guess I knew he'd been born and raised in Harlem and all that, but even so, he spent a lot of his spare time running around the Village and when you are used to seeing a particular person in a specific setting it was jarring to encounter him someplace entirely different; it made you feel almost like the person had a second life he kept secret from you. As I looked at Miles now, I imagined his other, Harlem life.

“You two know that fella?” Rusty asked. Eden and I nodded.

“He runs around the Village scene. Kind of funny to see him up here.”

“Bring him over here and invite him to the party at your pad,” Rusty said to me, and I realized the imperial toddler was back.

“We're not having a party at our pad,” I said, and Rusty gave me a look and suddenly I understood: We
were
having a party at our pad. I crossed the bar to where Miles sat on a barstool and after a few niceties cajoled
him into joining us at our table. I could tell Miles was uncomfortable to see us outside the Village, but it was not in his personality to be impolite so he followed me back to the table.

Eden seemed genuinely pleased to see old Miles. They smiled openly at each other and she asked him about Columbia and about graduating and about the bicycle messenger business. Rusty and I sat there scowling, me because here was my wife as chummy as can be with a fellow I wasn't aware she knew so well, and Rusty because the whole idea was that everybody should pay attention to him and most especially that Miles should pay attention to him.

“Tell him about the party you're throwing,” Rusty said, cutting into the conversation. I told Miles about the party and invited him and he looked vaguely uncomfortable.

“I don't know,” he said. “I'm going out of town soon.”

“When are you leaving?” Rusty demanded.

Miles hesitated. “I've still got to make sure everything's in order, but in the next week or so.”

“Well, our party is
this
week, so you can fit it in, no problem. Tell you what: We'll make it a bon voyage party,” Rusty insisted.

“Oh, don't do that,” Miles said, hesitating. “But I suppose I can drop in,” he continued, mostly to me and to Eden.

Rusty grinned in victory and leered a bit in a drunken, stoned manner as he looked Miles over. Miles shifted uncomfortably under Rusty's stare and pretended rapt interest in the musicians on the stage despite the fact they hadn't started playing just yet.

I saw Eden give both of them a nervous glance but when she looked at me with a question in her eyes I only shrugged. Just then the first blast of the trumpet sounded and barked its way through a tongue-twisting series of very fast jazz notes and the stage lit up with colored lights as the musicians started to play. Rusty relented and turned his attention to the stage and so did we and those musicians began to blow with an impressively
urgent and limber force. The club began to fill up and soon the room was thick with smoke from cigarettes and tea and cigars and also the groggy garlicky heat of sweaty bodies standing close to one another.

I could already tell it was going to be a late night, and once again Eden and I were probably going to spend more money than we could afford, and that meant by the end of the month we would be scrambling all over again to get the rent paid. I wasn't feeling sorry for myself; these were just the facts. And now Rusty had demanded a party, which meant soon we were going to be hosting some kind of shindig at our pad and that would also be an expense. I wasn't looking forward to any of this but at that time we were both still afraid to disappoint Rusty. There was a vague indirect sprinkling of dread over my thoughts that night, like a handful of kernels that had yet to sink into the soil. But it was a nice night, or at least that's my memory of it, so instead of worrying about anything Rusty could get up to, I sat back and listened to the tremendous musicians blow. After only ten minutes or so of listening to the jazz I had managed to push those seedlings of nervous dread to the back of my mind with the hope that, once there, they would fail to take root.