Bright, Precious Days (34 page)

RUSSELL WAS SNORING BESIDE HER
when the bedside phone woke her up Sunday morning just after eight. For some reason, she was afraid it was Luke, until she saw Casey's name on caller ID.

“I've left you like a million messages and texts.”

“Casey?”

“Tom's run off with some bimbo.”

“What?”

“Can you meet me at Balthazar in thirty minutes?”

“I'll try. Make it forty-five. Let's say nine.”

Russell and the kids were still asleep when she left; she taped a note to the medicine cabinet, saying she'd be home before eleven.

Her friend was waiting for her at one of the banquettes along the back wall, overdressed in a formfitting black leather jacket with epaulets over a shiny silver shirt. It looked like last night's outfit.

“I can't believe it,” Corrine said as she sat down.

“
You
can't believe it?”

“Who is she?”

“Nobody. Miss Nobody from Nowhere.”

“Do you think it's serious?”

“He called her his girlfriend. To my face.”

“I don't know what to say.”

“I know.”

“Are you…You must be devastated.”

“I'm furious, is what I am.”

“What happened? How did you find out?”

“I caught him in the act.”

“In flagrante delicto?”

“Not quite. I ran into him in the hallway of the Lowell last night, coming out of a room. Rumpled hair and clothes, shit-eating postcoital grin. And this little redhead hottie in a terry-cloth bathrobe with her boobs hanging out, sending him off with a kiss.”

“What were you doing in the Lowell?”

“The point is, I caught him coming out of the room, and he was so busted, he didn't even try to make it sound plausible. He just sputtered something about having a meeting in the hotel.”

“So what did you do?” Corrine couldn't help imagining this scene from Tom's point of view, imagining herself as Tom—caught in the act.

“I turned on my heels and stormed off.”

“Didn't he try to stop you?”

“Of course he did.”

“So he's sorry.”

“Not nearly as sorry as he will be.”

“I know, it's devastating, Casey. But given what's at stake…you don't want to act rashly.”

“What am I supposed to do?
Forgive
him?”

“Not now, okay, not tomorrow, but don't you think that someday you'll want to? Given the alternative? Granted, it's a terrible betrayal—but in the context of all those years together? And let's face it, it's not as if you haven't strayed.” Suddenly pondering the prospect of getting caught herself, Corrine was wondering if Tom was relieved, if part of her would feel relieved.

“You sound like you're on his side.”

“Not at all. I just want you to think hard before you decide to leave your marriage. People make mistakes. Marriages have different chapters, and some of them are dark. I don't mean to excuse what he did, but maybe, just for a while, after all these years you started to take each other for granted and he felt neglected and he felt his own mortality and at a low moment someone came along who made him feel young and special and invincible again. I'm just saying.”

“He won't feel invincible after my lawyers carve him a new one.”

“I still don't understand what you were doing in the Lowell. It's such a weird coincidence. Were you following him?”

“I had no idea.”

“You just happened to be at the Lowell?”

“I was meeting someone,” she snapped.

“At what point did he call her his girlfriend?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it sounds like he was flustered and then you stormed off before he could explain.”

“I'm sorry, I'm traumatized and it's all a bit of a blur.”

“So what happened after that? Did he come home last night?”

Casey shook her head.

“He was probably just too ashamed to face you. But I'm sure he'll come back.”

She snorted derisively. “Good luck to him.”

“Give it time.”

Even as she was sympathizing with her friend, she couldn't help being deeply conscious of the fact that Casey had been blissfully unfaithful to Tom over the years, so the moral high ground was real estate to which she couldn't plausibly aspire. Or rather, she might, but that co-op board was never going to let her in the building.

Corrine couldn't help extrapolating about her own life; what if, while she'd been obsessed with Luke, Russell had been carving out a life of his own? Was it possible that his malaise reflected some romantic impasse? That he was tortured by having to decide between two lives or depressed—as she'd once been, after Luke left New York—by a hopeless love affair, a passion he'd renounced but couldn't forget? She'd been so absorbed by her own secret life, she hadn't stopped to consider the possibility that he might have one, as well.

“I'll take him for everything he's worth,” Casey said.

“Do you have a prenup?”

She shook her head, smiling savagely. “That's the beauty part.”

“That's
…wow.
” For people in their circle, of their means, it seemed to Corrine, there had always been a codicil to marriage vows.

“We were young and in love.”

“Well, try to remember those days before you make any big decisions.”

“I guess the timing isn't great for Russell,” Casey said. “I know Tom was going to invest in his company.”

“Really? I had no idea.”

“I'm sorry, I just assumed you knew. I've actually been going through a whole moral dilemma about that anyway. Ever since Washington told me about Russell losing Jack Carson, I was in this really weird position where I didn't feel like I could tell Tom, but at the same time it did seem relevant to McCane, Slade's fiscal health. Oh shit,” she said, seeing Corrine's face. “You didn't know about that, either?”

“When did this happen?”

“I don't know, but Washington told me about ten days ago. I don't think he realized Tom and Russell were going into business together. Which put me in this totally awkward position. Anyway, I gather Carson wrote Russell a letter. Basically, thanks but sayonara. You honestly didn't know?”

That night, they lingered at the dinner table, Russell nursing a last glass of Pinot Noir that he hadn't even bothered to comment upon. Corrine waited until the kids had retreated to their rooms to do homework before relating the saga of Tom and Casey.

“I still can't believe it,” she concluded.

“You said this girl was a redhead?”

“Why, do you know her?”

He seemed to pause before he shook his head.

“I mean, it certainly wasn't a perfect marriage, but after all these years I'd just assumed they'd always be together.”

“The phrase
perfect marriage
ought to be abolished,” he said. “It's a pernicious oxymoron.”

“Do you really believe that?” she said. “People used to say that about us. We were that couple once.”

“Please don't make me feel bad about stating the obvious.”

“But we
do
have a good marriage?”

“Let's not play this game.”

“Humor me, Russell. I'm worried about you. And about us.”

“We'll be fine.”

“But why aren't we fine right now? It doesn't feel fine. What's wrong? You've been virtually catatonic the past two months.”

Corrine reminded herself to tread lightly, conscious of her own role in the estrangement. At the same time, she was weary of their lack of intimacy. Part of her just wanted a decision to be made for her.

“It's not you.”

“Well, then, tell me what it is. I'm your wife. Not telling me what's wrong is a form of dishonesty. If you're in trouble, I need to know. Is there someone else?”

He looked up, startled. “Of course not,” he said.

So that was off the table. “Is it about Jack?”

“Jack?”

“Why didn't you tell me he left you? How could you not tell me something that important? And how could you not tell me about soliciting an investment from Tom?”

He looked at her helplessly, pleadingly. Before he turned away, she saw that his eyes were welling with tears.

She leaned into him, kissed his neck and hugged him close, feeling his resistance fade as he exhaled and wrapped his arms around hers. At some point she realized he was crying, his torso convulsing rhythmically against her shoulder. She held him tighter, until the sobbing subsided.

Afterward, he showed her Jack's letter.

“I can't believe he'd do this to you after all you did for him.”

“The news hasn't broken yet, but it will any day.”

She stroked the hair away from his damp forehead. “I'm so sorry, honey.”

“And then I'm well and truly fucked.”

“Writers change publishers all the time.”

“Jack isn't just another writer. He's a game changer. And I'm not just any editor—I'm the guy who published the infamous bogus memoir a few months back.”

“I've hated the bastard ever since he killed Ferdie. Face it, Russell, the guy's a train wreck. You have other books, other writers.”

“Not as many as I used to. And submissions have been way down this spring. I can't even get agents to send me books.”

“We'll be all right,” she said. As worried as she was about Russell, and about his business, in a possibly perverse way she was grateful for this crisis, for the opportunity to weather it with him. If she'd been waiting for a sign, this might well be it.

SPRING ARRIVED LATE,
fitful and grudging, and then refused to make way for summer, which was fine with Russell. Even if he'd been eager to display himself on the lawns and beaches of the Hamptons that summer, which he wasn't, their straitened finances pretty much ruled it out, as did the sale of the Sagaponack farmhouse—for six million dollars—in March, a few days before Bear Stearns collapsed.

But with the economy sagging under the weight of the subprime mortgage crisis, the buyer's financing was delayed, and in mid-June the Polanskis offered the house to the Calloways, without charge, on the condition that they'd vacate on a week's notice. Corrine, who'd always handled communications with the Polanskis, was delighted by their generosity, and Russell couldn't think of a reason to decline the offer. So it looked as if he had no choice but to spend his summer among the voyeurs and exhibitionists who were his friends and peers, on the only spit of land in America where his business was remotely a matter of public interest.

Real estate was a hot topic in the Calloway household that summer. When their TriBeCa landlord opened with an offer of $1.5 million for the loft, Russell was forced to admit they couldn't swing it, not when he was struggling to keep his company afloat. While he fervently searched for financing in a tightening credit market, Corrine, he felt certain, was scouting real estate in the upper reaches of the metropolis.

The Calloways spent the last two rainy weekends in June cocooned beside the steely, too-cold-to-swim-in ocean, juggling playdates and sleepovers for the kids. Finally, in July, the sun returned from wherever it had been hiding, tennis was reinvented and Corrine moved out to the beach full-time with the kids, her summer sabbatical being one of the few perks of the nonprofit sector.

On Thursday nights, Russell rode out to Sagaponack on the jitney, returning to the city early Monday morning. Far from resenting his schedule, he cherished the solitude of these bachelor weekdays, working late and dining with a book at the bar at Soho House or the Fatted Calf, loved walking home through the clamorous, sweaty youth brigades of the Meatpacking District. He was bewitched by the vistas of feminine flesh, the exposed limbs and shoulders and the upper slopes of breasts swelling above halter tops, the flimsy summer dresses clinging at the top and fluttering up above the knees. He wanted them all, these girls of summer, but he didn't want any of them enough to act on his desire. Sometimes he found himself haunted by the regret that he'd never been a single man in the city, never walked these streets free and open to romantic adventure, to the spontaneous pursuit of erotic impulse, having moved in with Corrine as soon as he returned from Oxford and then marrying her soon after, although those early days had their own burnished halo of romance, when New York seemed to be a frontier teeming with infinite opportunities. Even now, despite their seasonal recurrence over the decades, the blasts of heat from the subway grates, the tarry smell of the melting streets like a bass note beneath the acrid tang of urban compost, the animal, vegetable and human waste decomposing and fermenting in the heat, invariably carried him back to his earliest, happiest years here, before they had enough money or vacation days to escape the summer heat, when the city, having been abandoned by the geezers, belonged to them and their kind. The days before they could afford an air conditioner, sprawling, stunned, on damp sheets, naked and slick with sweat and each other's secretions.

On these weekday evenings, Russell had dinner with Washington or Carlo Rossi, or caught up with friends he'd been too busy to see during the school year, flagging a cab or wobbling home in the humid fug, buzzed on cheap rosé, catching a last blast of heat from the subway vent in the sidewalk just outside the door, arriving home around midnight to pass out in front of
Frasier
and
Seinfeld
reruns. Television was a consolation for being alone, a solitary, guilty pleasure. He inevitably woke up with the TV on, a few hours after he'd fallen asleep, the pressure of his bladder as insistent as the alarm. He hardly ever slept through the night anymore. This was the only time he felt lonely and missed his family, the hour or two before dawn, when he lay awake racked by thoughts of bankruptcy and mortality. Like Fitzgerald at Asheville, trembling in the 3:00 a.m. darkness—except that, unlike Fitzgerald, he had no
Great Gatsby
to show when he met his Maker, only a thin portfolio of clerical accomplishments in the service of literature. And several gaudy failures—his failed takeover of Corbin, Dern; the Kohout debacle. In fact, after a long struggle with his Catholic upbringing, he no longer believed he would meet anyone on his departure from this existence, and the notion of oblivion filled him with despair. He'd always been an optimist, able to convince himself that the best was still ahead, that every day held the promise of new adventure, but now he seemed increasingly conscious of his failures and anxious about the future. It was impossible to be optimistic at three-forty-five in the morning, at the age of fifty-one, and there were times when he was absolutely terrified at the prospect of his own extinction. Finally, he took half an Ambien or a Xanax and waited for the panic to subside.

In the daylight, despite the dull ache at the back of his skull from the Ambien—the feeling that his skull had been trepanned by dental drills—and the parched prickle in his throat, he felt grateful that he'd survived the terrors of the night.

That month, the contract holder on the Sagaponack house, a thirty-four-year-old banker from Lehman Brothers, was poised to close on the property and came twice to inspect the house before concluding that he would tear it down. When Corrine reported this to Russell, she was indignant. “This goddamn zillionaire philistine in a pink golf shirt with a giant polo-player logo and his wife with her fake tits and her John Barrett Salon blond hair planning their McMansion.”

While it looked as if they could probably stay on through Labor Day, it was now clear this would be their last summer there, and that the house itself, after surviving a hundred and fifty years of hurricanes and nor'easters, would succumb to the wrecking ball, a fact that further eroded Russell's self-esteem, and added to his sense that the world as he knew it was crumbling around him. How was it that after working so hard and by many measures succeeding and even excelling in his chosen field, he couldn't afford to save this house that meant so much to his family? Their neighbors seemed to manage, thousands of people no smarter than he was—less so, most of them—except perhaps in their understanding of the mechanics of acquisition. Partly, he knew, it was his lack of the mercenary instinct. Never caring enough about getting and keeping and compounding, he'd felt himself above such considerations and stayed true to the ideals he'd formed in college, at the expense of his future. If he'd been savvy and resourceful, he could have bought this house years ago, or, more important, a place to live in the city, but as things stood, he owned nothing; he'd missed the biggest real estate boom of his lifetime and even now that the bubble was bursting, his own finances were more precarious than ever. It was increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that he was, by the conventional measures of familial and professional achievement, a failure.

Russell stayed at the beach throughout August, working mornings at the rickety wicker desk in the den overlooking the potato fields. For the first time in many years, he declined an invitation to play in the artists' and writers' softball game—an event that had its origins in a pickup game back in the fifties with the likes of de Kooning and Pollock and Franz Kline nursing their hangovers on a scrubby lawn in the unfashionable town of Springs; the game had later been infiltrated by art critics and other writers, eventually becoming an annual spectacle in which movie stars and politicians vied for spots in the lineup, the painters claiming the actors as fellow artists; the politicians usually played with the writers—an acknowledgment, as one novelist suggested, of their accomplishments in the field of fiction. By virtue of his occasional essays and book reviews, Russell had qualified as a writer and had played for years, and while the mode of the event was more comic than epic, he'd prided himself on his accomplishments on the field, dependable and, occasionally, distinguished. This year, he just didn't have it in him.

After moving out to the beach, he found time for simpler pleasures—cooking for the family, seeking out the best tomatoes and corn and fresh fish; fishing, playing tennis and bodysurfing with Jeremy. He watched John Edwards admitting his extramarital affair on ABC; he watched hours of the summer Olympics with the kids. He liked to think he was comporting himself as a model father and husband, largely avoiding the big social events, the benefits under the big white tents, the clambakes on the beach and the movie premieres in Southampton and East Hampton. He told Corrine he was sick of all that, that he wanted to cherish, with her and the kids, these final days in this house where they'd spent their summers for twenty years. Corrine was too smart to buy it but too loving to call him on it, except once. They were curled up together in bed on a night when they'd skipped a party he'd enjoyed for years. “It's been so nice,” she said, “these past few weeks, I could happily skip the next hundred cocktail parties, but I know it's like a punishment for you. I've waited for years for you to get a little weary of the endless social treadmill, but I hate to see you crawl away and hide like a criminal.”

“I
have
gotten a little weary of it,” he said. “Suddenly the whole thing seems empty and exhausting. August in the Hamptons—it's not relaxing; it's work. It's like climbing Everest.”

“It's been like that for a long time, but you never complained before.”

“We all have our tipping point.”

“Have you given any more thought to whether we're going to have the party?”

Russell had previously had the excuse that they might be thrown out of the house on a week's notice, but now their residency was secured through Labor Day. “It's a lot of work,” he muttered.

“Come on, Russell, it's only three weeks till Labor Day. I can't believe I'm having to talk you into this party, but people have been calling to ask me about it. You've created a tradition.”

“Corrine's right, actually,” Washington said the next night as they stood amid the throng at the bar of the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. They'd just finished two sets of tennis at the public courts down the road and Washington had insisted on buying the loser a gin and tonic. “You've kept your head down for a while now, but it's time to get back out there. Not having the party's like some admission of guilt. I mean, how many books have you published in your career? Two hundred? Three? You made a bad call, and it's too bad, Crash, but you've got to get back on the goddamn horse. You've done your time in the wilderness and we're all ready to forgive, forget and party on.”

“There's also a question of funds. Kohout wasn't just a PR disaster. I lost more than half a million bucks.”

“How much do you need? For the party, I mean.”

“I can't take your money.”

“Call it a loan, then. I need this fucking party.”

That same night, Steve Goldberg, the coach of the writers' softball team, called to appeal to him to play the next day. An old friend or at least acquaintance of Russell's, Steve was a sportswriter for the
Times.
“We need you out there, Russell. The fucking artists have a couple of ringers this year; they've got this guy Junior Gonzales who played in the minors for the Yankee organization. Apparently, he made a ceramic frog in sixth grade and that qualifies him as an artist.”

“I'd love to, but I've got a lunch,” Russell said.

“What fucking lunch? This is the game, Russell. Lunch happens every day. The writers need your help.” It was supposed to be a fun, even frivolous, event, a fund-raiser for local charities, but Steve took it very seriously.

In the end, Russell allowed himself to be bullied into it. Applying Washington's rationale for the party, he told himself this was as good a way as any of showing that he wasn't down-and-out; the game was virtually the only public event of the season out here, most functions taking place behind tall hedges, at the end of gated driveways manned by security guards with guest lists on clipboards.

“I'm glad you're playing,” Corrine said. “I'll be over after I drop the kids off at the Toomeys'.”

By the time the first ball was thrown out by an Iraq vet with prosthetic legs, some five hundred spectators had gathered along the first and third baselines. Color commentary was provided by Tim Watkins, the NBC correspondent, who introduced Russell as “editor extraordinaire and Most Valuable Player in 2004.”

He started as catcher and hit a hard grounder for a single in the second inning. Corrine arrived as he was donning his mask for the third inning. Three plays later, with the bases loaded, Tom Jarrow, the artist, whacked a high fly into center field. Russell ripped off his mask and took a wide stance over home plate. The runners held their bases until the center fielder made the catch and threw the ball to the second baseman, who spun and threw it to Russell as the runner on third charged in. It wasn't a great throw and Russell had to reach high for it as he kept his foot on the plate. Though he was confident the ball was within reach, it somehow tipped the top edge of his glove and bounced off, hitting the backstop as the runner scored home. Russell couldn't believe he'd blown the catch, and the shock of it paralyzed him even as he registered the runner from second base approaching at full speed; he felt as if he were swimming through mud as he launched himself toward the backstop and finally snatched the ball just as the second guy sailed over home plate for another run.

The hubbub from the artists' side of the field underscored the terrible silence on his own side. No one said a word as Russell threw the ball back to the pitcher.