East Into Upper East (35 page)

A few years after moving out of Sophie's apartment, Dave moved back in again. A lot had happened in the meantime—principally, that Dave had been in jail. He had been convicted of fraud. Betsy and Sophie never got the details clear, and Dave swore (on his mother's grave, his usual oath) that he had been framed. This may have been true—his business affairs were conducted in shadowy areas where, as far as his wife and sister were concerned, anything could happen. He was sentenced to three years in a minimum security facility, and they were able to visit him every fortnight. They sat with him in a large, bleak reception room, among other prisoners surrounded by their families. Dave introduced them to some of his fellow inmates—he said most of them were very decent people caught up, like himself, in situations beyond their control. They all chatted with their visitors in low voices, under the surveillance of two guards; the atmosphere was not unlike that of a boys' boarding school
on Parents Day, an impression enhanced by the blue uniforms worn by the prisoners. But there was also—and this was not like Parents Day—a pervading sense of shame, of an imposed humiliation that made inmates and their visitors avoid each other's eyes. One old man sat in a corner with his visitor, an old woman who kept stroking his hands, looking away from him and not speaking a word.

Dave, as subdued as the rest, was quite unlike himself. He had lost weight but nevertheless bulged rather ridiculously out of his shirt and knee-pants. When it was time to leave, all the prisoners gathered in an enclosed space off the parking lot for a last glimpse of their dear ones driving away. They crowded each other, and those closest to the wiremesh fence pushed their fingers through and waggled them in farewell. Sophie and Betsy drove mile after mile in silence. Betsy at the wheel stared tensely at the road ahead of her; sometimes her lips moved, but she was speaking to herself and all she said was, “Thank God Mamma's gone,” and she sighed from some place inside herself where her heart was breaking. But when after a couple of hours they came to a roadhouse, she always stopped, and with another deep sigh conceded that they had better eat something; and inside she was picky about the menu, saying the cheeseburger she had had last week had been stale and she would try their spaghetti Bolognese this time.

During his two-year absence—one year off for good behavior—the apartment Dave had bought to keep his girl friend in had to be sold to pay his fine and legal fees. The girl friend herself disappeared, so when he came out, it was natural that he should return to live with his wife. Sophie's one desire was to restore him to himself, so neither by word nor look would she make the least reference to his former behavior, or the mess it had landed them in. His sister was not so reticent; on the contrary. He welcomed her reproaches, which he said he fully deserved, and assured her that his sentence had done him good, by giving him the chance to review and renew his character. And there was a sort of renewal about him—he wasn't just resilient but seemed to jump even higher than before, as if his enforced period of inaction had charged him up with fresh energy. He threw himself into what he had missed in his absence—for instance, dinner-dance in his favorite hotel. It was like he and Sophie were on honeymoon again, and he booked a fine table and ordered a bottle of champagne, which they had difficulty
getting through for they were not serious drinkers, and neither was Betsy. Betsy always had to make a third with them because, though he had tried and tried to teach her, Sophie couldn't dance. She stayed behind at their table, among their crumpled napkins and half-drunk glasses of champagne and the gravy stains on the white cloth where Dave had too eagerly helped himself to the veal sauce. Entirely unmusical, she could not help tapping her foot, not so much to the sound of the band as to the rhythm of Dave and Betsy dancing together. It didn't matter that both were middle-aged—everyone else was too, or even elderly, no younger person could afford to come here. Dave was too fat and Betsy too scraggy, but they were both terrific dancers, better than they had ever been, charged up and indefatigable, Betsy flashing lights from her diamonds, Dave from his cuff-links and rings; his pomaded hair was dyed blacker than it had been in his youth and shone like his patent leather pumps that twinkled on the dance floor.

With the same exuberance, he started up his various businesses, taking on a new side-line in parquet flooring that yielded him a lot of money. Soon Dave was rich again and was himself again—which meant that he was out from early morning and came back late every night after his poker game. But he did not neglect to call Sophie at intervals throughout his day to tell her where he was and what he was doing, and though she did not always believe him, she was always glad to hear his voice. However, within two years he was obsessed with another young girl and had to buy another place to keep her in. Again he moved out of Sophie's apartment, while resuming his regular visits to her to keep reassuring himself of her forgiveness.

Around this time Michael showed up on one of his periodic visits to New York. It was a time of crisis for him too—now in his thirties, he was discovering that the freedom to pick and choose among religious traditions could be as unsettling as switching between graduate programs. Of course his mother understood nothing of this and anyway would not have had time to listen. She was entirely preoccupied by what was happening with Sophie and Dave, although she claimed that she had given up on her brother, whose pitiful sex life she said was no business of hers. And neither, she continued—for when Michael came home after his prolonged absences, Betsy talked non-stop—was it her business what Michael's father Harvey
Goldstein was doing, which was more or less the same as her brother Dave. That was the way it was now, Betsy told Michael: in the old days, fathers would sneak out to eat a ham sandwich in an automat, that was about the extent of it, but today nothing less would do than a twenty-year-old blonde fresh from Kansas City.

“At least you lead a clean life,” Betsy said to Michael—but she looked at him suspiciously (Is he gay? Frigid?). “You should talk to them a bit, give them the benefit of whatever it is you're studying—not that they'd understand a word of it . . . What do you talk to them about anyway, when they take you to one of those grand lunches, your father or your uncle? Not that they'd have time to talk, they'd be too busy stuffing themselves with all that risotto and rubbish they shouldn't be eating.”

This wasn't a bad guess. Michael's father, who made frequent business trips from Los Angeles, felt obliged to see his son whenever their visits to New York coincided. He had other sons—a new family altogether—but Michael was his oldest, maybe his smartest, certainly his oddest. He appeared ambivalent about Michael's oddness—both embarrassed and intrigued by it. The embarrassment usually won out, and his father spent most of their time together with his head bent low over his plate, grunting with the effort and pleasure of eating, so that Michael was reminded of Betsy saying, “Men are animals.” As if guessing his thought, his father would lift his head—licking away a trickle of sauce from the corner of his mouth—and meet his son's eyes, washed clear by meditation: he tried to explain himself, making a philosophy out of his cravings—for food, sex, a terrific deal—because what else was there, he asked, what better thing than for a man to enjoy the fruits of his hard work and success.

His uncle Dave took Michael to similar packed and noisy luxury restaurants—it may even have been the same one, it certainly had the same sort of clientele pressed together on rows of velvet banquettes too small for them. Dave also shoveled a lot of food into his mouth very quickly, but when he took time out to look up from his plate, it was to explain that he had been tempted sometimes to leave all this—he waved a fatty hand with rings on it at their surroundings—and to devote himself to higher values the way Michael did: and as he spoke, there was a yearning in his eyes as for something ineffable—but this may have been because his eyes
were dark, oriental, seemingly fathomless, so that anything could be read into them.

Sophie continued to keep her secret, although every day tempted to disclose it. One day she even left some of her medicines in view—strong drugs and painkillers—as if hoping to be questioned about them. However, as usual, Dave had too much on his mind: principally, his new girl friend who wasn't worth, he said, to kiss Sophie's shoe. Never in his life had he met anyone so selfish and lazy—well, of course, it was to be expected from young girls, that they would want to stay in bed cocooned in that deep warm sleep out of which nothing could rouse them except the phone ringing and someone inviting them for lunch or to go shopping at Bendel's, and then how they would jump out of bed and wriggle into their tights and try one ridiculous little short outfit after the other while spraying clouds of scent under their armpits and into the hollows of their knees. While he said all this, Dave was too excited to sit still but wandered around, in and out of various rooms, including Sophie's bedroom.

“What's all this?” he asked, stopping short for a moment by the array of medicine bottles she had left out on her bedside table. “Why are you taking all this stuff?”

She came up behind him, quickly swept them into the drawer where she usually hid them.

He rebuked her: “You know how I feel about people taking pills.”

“Yes I know, but these—”

“Some bicarbonate to settle your stomach, maybe an aspirin sometimes, but the rest—all they do is poison your system.”

“These are just vitamins.”

“Well okay, vitamins—that's good, you have to keep up your strength, I need you, dear. Nobody will believe this, but I need you more than ever.” He kissed her brow, and when she shut her eyes, he kissed the lids.

One day Michael saw an ugly sight in the cross-street where Dave lived with his new girl friend. It was Dave himself in an argument
with a girl. This was presumably his girl friend whom none of them had ever met, for Dave was always careful not to mix family and other matters. She was certainly a type he would have gone for—platinum blond, and with terrific legs stretching out of a very short skirt. Dave himself wore a smart double-breasted suit that set off his stout figure wonderfully but was a bit too young for him. He was trying to explain something to the girl, talking fast and gesticulating with his hands like the Middle Eastern businessman he was. The girl didn't respond at all but kept on walking—till suddenly she stood still and, without a word, began to hit him around the head with her crocodile handbag, so that he had to put up his arms to protect himself. Then she walked on, very briskly on her high heels, her blond hair swinging furiously; and he followed, pleading, protesting, running behind her as though attached to her and pulled on a leash.

Although Michael did not mention this incident to Betsy, it was easy enough for her to guess that, besides business troubles, Dave was also having personal ones. He complained to her, “Young people don't understand.”

“You mean they don't understand that you need money,” Betsy answered him. He had borrowed from her and she had given him all she could, but she realized it was nowhere near enough to cover his present difficulties.

“He'll have to sell the apartment and put her somewhere else she won't like so much,” Betsy said to Michael, who guessed that this may have been the cause of the scene he had witnessed. Anyway, selling the apartment no longer appeared to be an option Dave felt he could exercise; and in considering others, or another, he became increasingly agitated, gnawing at the skin around his thumb and driving Betsy crazy with anxiety. He jumped every time the phone rang, even at Betsy's, and said, “I'm not here.”

“Who says it's for you?” she said as she went to answer it—and it always was for her. But she wondered what could be happening to him that he wouldn't tell her—“You're not involved in another case, are you?”

“What case? What are you talking about?”