JM01 - Black Maps (19 page)

“You made it. David and I were betting that you wouldn’t.” Stephanie smiled thinly at me. She’s thirty-four, the same age as David, and the two of them have been inseparable since b-school. It’s no wonder. I can’t imagine that either of them had ever encountered anyone as driven or abrasive as themselves before. It was either marry or kill each other. I guess they made the right choice.

Stephanie is five foot three and whippet thin, with wiry brown hair that she wrestles into strange shapes, darting brown eyes too big for her pinched face, and a bitter little mouth. She’s an equity analyst for a big firm downtown, and a good one, from what I hear. But her real talent is scheming with David on how best to advance his career, and at whose expense. We were not close.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said to her. I turned to Lauren. “Where are the boys?” My question was answered the next moment when two bundles of tousled energy exploded into the room.

“Uncle Johnny!” they both shouted. Derek, the elder at six, made a lame attempt to compose himself and shake my hand. His four-year-old brother, Alec, wrapped his arms around my legs and head-butted me in the knees. I lifted each one in turn for a hug and a kiss. My nephews have thick, gingery hair—in wild disarray, just then—and their dad’s broad face and features. They’d doubled in size since the last time I’d seen them.

Janine had dressed them alike today, in khakis, blue oxford shirts, and loafers, but they were massively disheveled—faces red, shirttails out, sleeves up, trousers sagging. Alec had only one shoe. An amused-looking girl in a gray skirt and black sweater followed them in, holding the other one. Tyler is Ned and Janine’s au pair, from somewhere in the Midwest. She’s about twenty, with long blond hair and cool blue eyes. She smiled at me and knelt to help Alec with his shoe.

“You guys look like five miles of bad road,” I said.

“You look like ten miles,” Alec laughed, and whacked me in the thigh.

“Hey, we saw the stuff you got us. Want to build Legos?” Derek asked.

“Not now, sir,” Janine said, coming up behind him. “We’re about to eat, so you two get yourselves cleaned up. I don’t know how you got into this state.” She looked pointedly at Tyler, who seemed not to hear her.

“After dinner, guys,” I said, as Tyler led them away.

“Here’s David,” Janine said to no one in particular. “Good. Let’s go into the dining room, shall we?” David is about my height, and thin. He has the same ruddy coloring as Ned, and the same wavy, ginger hair, worn longer. His sharp features are gathered closely on his face, which seems always caught somewhere between a scowl and a sneer. He had on the same blue blazer–gray flannel rig as Ned, but with a blue-striped bow tie. He was coming in from the terrace, and someone was with him.

She was wearing little black shoes that had a strap over the top and a buckle on the side, forest green tights and a black pleated skirt that ended a few inches north of her knees, a wide suede belt with a buckle made of horn, and a close-fitting, high-collared tunic in a green that matched her tights. Sherwood Forest by way of SoHo. She wore no jewelry other than the one diamond and two emerald studs in her small ears. Her mouth was curved in a polite smile at something David was saying, but as she stepped into the room Jane Lu looked up and cocked one of her delicate brows at me.

I turned to Lauren, who wore a little smirk. “Another stray?” I asked.

“Yep. Her family is in Boston, and she’s working tomorrow, and no one else she knew was in town. So I invited her. Didn’t I mention it?”

“Must’ve slipped your mind.” I followed her into the dining room. It was smaller than the living room, but not by much. It was painted a deep orange, and had its own set of French doors, with green drapes. An old tapestry depicting fruits and vegetables hung on one wall. The table was a long oval. Even with fifteen of us there was plenty of elbow room.

Ned and Janine had taken no liberties with tradition, but had attempted to cover all the bases. There were three kinds of stuffing with the immense turkey, cranberry in sauce and relish forms, potatoes mashed and sweet, peas, creamed onions, candied carrots, fresh-baked white bread and corn bread, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and Indian pudding.

There was a lot of shifting of seats as the meal progressed, and a lot of talk, as there always is when my family is together. Tablewide discourse was mainly about the financial markets and politics. The smaller conversations were more varied. Keith and Jane Lu discovered some mutual acquaintances in Cambridge and compared notes on a defunct biotech firm. Liz and Lauren traded stories about our cousins. Ned and Janine tried in vain to determine where in Europe Marco was from. Jane spoke for a while in rapid German to the German couple, who laughed and seemed not so lost afterward. Lauren and Liz and Jane talked about moving and decorating and laughed a lot. Tyler explained to Marco about the different Kansas Cities, and where exactly Missouri was. Janine and Stephanie spoke acidly about some parties they’d attended recently. Ned and David and Liz had a long conversation in low, serious tones about Klein matters. Their faces were grim and tired looking. The boys bent my ear about some cartoon where the heroes were cuddly bunnies that transformed into giant, war-waging robots.

It was a pleasant enough meal. The only hiccup in the conversation came when the German woman asked what line of work I was in. David and Stephanie gave little snorts, almost in unison, Lauren and Liz shot them both dirty looks, Ned coughed nervously, and Janine nearly spilled her wine. I told her, but English was a struggle for her, and she looked puzzled. Jane said something to her and she nodded.

“Magnum, P.I., ja?”
she said, smiling.

It was after coffee that the inevitable happened. Ned buttonholed me as people were drifting out of the dining room. He looked like his collar was too tight. We sat back down. David lingered at the far end of the table and drained the last of the Chablis into his glass, a sour smile on his face.

“Why do you waste your time?” he said to Ned. “You know he’s not interested. He never has been.”

Ned frowned and cleared his throat. “I’d like to talk to John alone, if you don’t mind,” he said. David drank some wine, shook his head, and left.

“We contract all of our security work at Klein to Risk Management Associates—you probably know that,” Ned began. I did know it. RMA was a competitor of Brill, a big international investigations outfit. “They’ve done a fine job for us, for over a decade, and we have no complaints. But they notified us recently that the partner who has handled all of our business, a fellow we have a lot of faith in, is retiring. This, combined with the fact that our security needs have become more complex and sensitive in the last few years, has led the management committee to decide that we need someone in-house to manage our relationship with RMA. To be the point man, so to speak, for all of our security issues. This is a senior role, an SVP slot. I’ll cut to the chase, John—we think you’d be the right fellow for this.” I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “Thanks, Ned, but no. I could recommend some people who have much better backgrounds than I do for that sort of thing. But it’s really not for me.” Ned began to speak, to try and sell me, but David reappeared and cut him off.

“I told you it was pointless. Just like him—pointless—a waste. He doesn’t want a real job, no matter how good it is or how much trouble you’ve gone through to create it for him. He’d rather keep doing whatever it is he does—peeping through keyholes, spying on people. He’d rather keep on being an embarrassment.” Ned drew a sharp breath and his face darkened, but David turned to me and continued.

“And you—you’re nothing if not predictable. Though I’m not sure why you bother; Mother’s not around to be upset by you anymore, and Dad’s not here to be amused. Who are you playing to now?”

“I didn’t solicit your opinion, David,” Ned said icily. “You’re not on the management committee, and this has nothing to do with you. Now apologize and excuse yourself.” But before David could say anything, I got up. We looked at each other for a long moment.

“Thanks anyway, Ned,” I said. I walked down the long hallway, past the living room, where most people had congregated, through the den, where Keith was watching football and explaining it to Marco, and out the French doors to the terrace and the night air.

Windows were lit in the big buildings across Park Avenue, and people were moving in them. Parties, families. Between the buildings, I saw the dark mass of Central Park and the smaller, colder lights of the West Side. From up here, the streets were silent. A chilly breeze carried some of the heat from my face. I leaned against the stone parapet and breathed out slowly.

Insufferable prick though he was, David had a point. But it wasn’t just me that was predictable—it was that whole sorry fracas. My family and I have been having that argument, or something like it, for years.

There’ve been a few changes. Before career prospects, it had been about the company and the hours that I kept, and before that, about the probations and the suspensions from school. And before it was Ned, it had been my uncles offering the well-intentioned, sensible advice. Until her death, the kind words were spoken not by David, but by my mother, Elaine. And ever since my father, Philip, passed away, we’d been short one bemused, distracted spectator.

But the basic quarrel—about irresponsibility, expectations, and disappointment, about waste and embarrassment—endures. It’s old business, and it goes all the way back to Philip and Elaine, and their larger struggle.

It wasn’t outright war between them—there were no pitched battles, and it wasn’t that well organized. It was more a simmering border feud, with fierce skirmishes, stretches of nervous quiet, and an endless tallying of encroachments. But as to who was defending what territories, and against whom, I couldn’t say. Nor can I say how I became my father’s proxy in these firefights—how I became a lightning rod for so much of my mother’s disapproval and discontent. Maybe I was just less expert than my siblings at keeping out of the crossfire—at keeping my head down or choosing sides.

A door opened, and there were slow footsteps. Lauren stood next to me.

“Sorry,” she said. She spoke softly. I laughed a little.

“I won’t say
I told you so.
”

“Please don’t. I feel lousy enough as it is. I dragged you here, and told you this wouldn’t happen, and . . .”

“We’ve been at this a long time, Laurie. It’s not your fault.” She looked down at the street.

“Ned means well,” she said after a while.

“And David?” I asked.

“David’s a putz.” She laughed, and I laughed with her.

“His Mom impression is coming along,” I said. “Close your eyes, and you can’t tell the difference.”

Lauren turned to look at me. “She meant well, too, you know. Really.”

“If you say so.”

“It’s just that . . . you were too much like Dad,” Lauren said. “At least she thought you were.” A cold gust blew across the terrace, and I felt her shiver beside me. She crossed her arms, hugging herself.

“And that was by definition a bad thing, right?” I asked. “She did marry the guy, after all.” We were quiet, and watched a plane crawl across the sky.

“Ever wonder why?” she asked. “Ever wonder what the hell they saw in each other?” I chuckled.

“I don’t give it a lot of thought,” I said. “There’s only so much you can know about people—and less still about marriages. And when it comes to your parents’ marriage—forget it.”

“Is that a professional opinion?”

“If you asked me professionally, I’d say what I say to people who want their spouses followed: Are you sure you want to know? ” She laughed a little.

“Probably not. It’s a little too close to thinking about them having sex—it’d cost me a fortune in therapy.” The breeze picked up, and Lauren shivered again.

“Go in,” I said. “You’ll catch a chill.”

“You come too.” She rubbed her arms.

“In a minute,” I said.

I watched Lauren go inside and stand by Keith and Marco in the den. In another incarnation, the room had been my father’s study—the site of what my uncles called his very early retirement. It had been lined, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves then, and furnished with a broken-down leather sofa, a big leather chair, and a small writing table—all gone now. With its high windows and big view of sky, the room had seemed to me, at various times, like a treehouse, a lighthouse, and a sailboat. He’d called it his duck blind.

It wasn’t forbidden to us—we could go in when we liked. But I was the only one who ever did. I’d find him sprawled on the sofa, or in the chair, or sometimes writing or sketching at his small table, and I’d sprawl too, and read with him in silence. When I was older, he’d sometimes pull a volume off the shelf and toss it to me. He never said more than “You might like it,” and he never asked afterward if I had. It was an eclectic list—poetry and fiction mostly—Rilke, Akhmatova, Borges, Raymond Chandler, Robertson Davies, John Fante, Philip Dick—and if there was a message there, I couldn’t divine it.

He’d worked at Klein, in a job my grandfather made for him there, and one day, after twelve years, he’d stopped going—I never knew why. One of many things I never knew—about him, about them both.

I put my palms on the coping and felt the cold seep into my hands. I watched the figures move in the windows across the way. I thought about my words to Lauren and shook my head.