Somebody Else's Daughter (20 page)

She returned her hand to his shoulder and he helped her down and she stumbled a little and he gripped her and for a moment he could feel the ripple of her bones under his hands. She looked up at him and smiled in a shy way and he wondered if there was any possibility that she was feeling about him the way that he was feeling about her. He had an incredible desire to kiss her—but of course that could never happen. It wasn't right, it wasn't professional.

“Have you been teaching long?”

“Almost ten years.” He told her about his job at the high school in Brooklyn and she told him about the school her son had gone to in Los Angeles. “This is a whole new world to Teddy. No one's ever taken him seriously before.” She paused a moment and looked away and when she met his eyes again they were moist and full of emotion. “Do you believe in fate?”

He coughed. “Fate?” If it had anything to do with her, he did. “Yeah, I believe in it.”

She nodded as if she were grateful and then her forehead went tight and she looked as if she were about to say something to him, something important, when a noisy crowd came through the door. It was a whole throng of people, laughing raucously. Joe Golding came up to Claire and took her elbow possessively. Nate couldn't help thinking him arrogant. “We're all going over to Colette's, if you want to join us,” Golding told her, then glanced at Nate indifferently. “You're welcome too, Gallagher,” he said, his tone very slightly patronizing. Nate was, after all, only an employee.

“I've got to help out here,” Nate told him.

Claire smiled at Nate and shook off his jacket and gave it back to him. “Thank you, Mr. Gallagher.”

“Sure.”

Nate stood there a moment, watching the group wander off into the parking lot. It brought him back to his days at Choate—the way he'd felt then and the way he felt now—separate—different. Unlike the other kids, he wasn't there because of his abilities, and he would walk the paths of campus with his head hanging down, as though at any moment something would fall out of the sky and pummel him. The other kids were brighter, richer, confident. He was a mere tint among their vibrant colors and his father resented him for it. In those days, he'd felt secondhand, shopworn, but when he'd started shooting dope everything was new again. During those months with Catherine, he was
right there.
He'd felt connected to her, body and soul. The days unraveled the way they wanted to, uncontrived, inspired by little more than simple gravity. He could subsist on her tiny breasts, her flesh, her slow oboe voice. But the drugs had made him indifferent, and the world beyond their dark little room—the squealing buses, the strangers in the street, the fish market, the farmer's stands, the open cafés, the airplanes, the abrupt whirl of daylight—did not welcome him. Cat could not depend on him. And, as it turned out, she'd found herself a much more faithful keeper: death.

17

Colette's was a swishy bistro on Church Street. It was dusk, the sky violet as Italian plums. The restaurant was jammed, the parking lot full. Luckily, she found a spot on the street. She walked up the sidewalk under the yellow moon. The air was cold on her bare arms and she found herself missing the pleasing weight of Gallagher's jacket on her shoulders. Nate Gallagher was a gentleman, she thought wistfully, reviewing their conversation in her head like the lyrics of a favorite song. She had no business thinking about him in any way that was even remotely wistful and she blamed it on the wine and made a concerted effort to push the idea of him, gentleman that he was, out of her mind.

The others were already inside and had been seated at a table in the back. She had a sudden impulse to back out of the crowded place and drive home, but Joe Golding caught her eye and waved her over and she put a smile on her face. People like Golding didn't like to be kept waiting. They had the attention span of a peanut, and when they wanted something they figured out how to get it, no matter what. It was something the very rich and the very poor had in common.

It was a good restaurant, full of noisy, happy people. White walls, white table cloths, peonies in glass jars. They were a big group, thirteen in all. She took a seat at the end of the table next to Greta Travers, the other spouseless woman. Greta had short, boyish hair and wore very dark red lipstick and expensive gold earrings with tiny sapphires. They were the sort of earrings Claire might have worn for a state occasion, but when she complimented her on them Greta groped her lobes dispassionately, as if she'd forgotten she had them on. Joe and his wife, Candace, were sitting across from them. Greta was telling Candace that she had recently gotten divorced. Her husband, she explained, an orthopedist, ran off with his X-ray technician. “Apparently, she had very good bones.” She told the story of her escape from their Tribeca loft, her pugnacious thievery. She'd fled with her grandmother's Spode and wedding silver. “I took the Alice Neel paintings,” she said, finally. “They were
mine.
”

“What about you?” Candace Golding peered at Claire over her bifocals. “Don't you have a husband?”

“I'm an old spinster.”

“Hardly,” Candace said, waiting for an explanation.

“I've just never found anyone I wanted to marry.”

“Fascinating,” Candace said. “It is something of a challenge, I admit. It's certainly not for everyone.”

“What's not?” Joe said, turning back into the conversation.

“Marriage,” his wife said darkly. “I said it's not for everyone.”

Joe nodded noncommittally and opened his menu. “What are we ordering?” He looked at Claire and said, “The food here is fabulous. The chef's a genius.”

“They're friends of ours,” Candace said. “The husband makes all the breads. He's Italian. Whenever he comes to visit he brings us bread.”

“Look at this bread,” Joe said, taking one of the large rolls in his hand. “Look at it! Have you ever seen anything so perfect?” She watched him caress the warm bread. He ripped off a piece and gave it to her. “Here,” he handed her the olive oil and she dipped the bread and ate it and felt the oil running down her hand to her wrist. He motioned to the server to bring more. “It's so simple. All bread should be this good. It's not fucking rocket science.”

“Here we go,” Candace said. “Social commentary by Joe Golding. ”

“When you go to Italy even the poor people have good bread. But here in America the people with nothing eat shit. It's a simple thing, this bread.”

“I want to move to Italy,” Greta said.

“I often ask the question: Is it impossible to have a simple life?”

“The world is not simple,” Claire said.

“The world is not simple.” Joe repeated the phrase like the line of a great poem.

“There are too many people, there's too much stuff, too many choices. Even a trip to the supermarket's a challenge,” Claire said.

“Too many choices,” he agreed.

“But you can't go backward,” she said. “You can't just take it all away. You can't take away things that people have gotten used to, even the bad things. Things like cars. Lawn mowers. Disposable razors. It's not like people are going to start happily walking five miles down the road just to get their simple loaf of bread. It's not like we can take all the computers and dump them someplace and go back to actually talking to each other.”

“We're too used to pressing buttons,” Greta said.

Joe smiled. “It's too bad, isn't it? All the stuff that comes between us.” He looked at Claire. She had an impulse to touch him, to take his hand. They were connected somehow, more than the others at the table. She'd felt it earlier, at the wine tasting, a rift of desire that broke through from someplace dark.

The waiter came with the wine and poured it all around. Another server brought more bread, ceremoniously pouring the olive oil onto the plate. It was a bustling dining room, full of interesting people— different than L.A., Claire thought. In L.A., people had their projectors running 24/7—she called them the
I'm ready for my close-up
crowd— and that included everyone you saw, from the hoity-toity to the bum on the street—they were each a starring player in their own precious little movie. But here the people seemed less pretentious, a heady, intellectual crowd, the men in tweedy blazers, the women in linen dresses and Birkenstocks. They seemed eloquent and cultured, like her parents had been.

She was glad to be out of L.A. It was better here for Teddy. Her father had been right after all; she only wished she could thank him.

“Let's have a toast,” Joe said. “To simple pleasures.” He looked at her.

“Hear, hear,” she said.

They brought their glasses together. Everyone drank and looked at their menus.

“What are we ordering?” Candace asked.

“I was thinking of getting the lamb,” Golding said.

“I'm getting the lamb too,” Claire said.

“It's very greasy here,” Candace warned. “I wouldn't get that, Joe.”

“Maybe you're right,” he said.

“We'll have the fish tonight,” Candace decided, closing the menu.

The waiter came over to the table. Claire watched as Candace ordered their fish. She found herself smiling.

“And you, ma'am?” the waiter asked.

“I'm having the lamb,” Claire said.
The more grease the better.

The waiter left and another server came and replenished their wineglasses. Joe asked her what she did for a living.

“I'm a sculptor,” she said. “It's not much of a living, though.”

“That depends on how you define living,” he said.

“How marvelous,” Candace said. “What sort of sculpture?”

“I do figures, mostly women.”

“Have you shown your work?”

“There's a gallery in L.A. that shows my work.”

“Not New York?” She said it in a
poor baby
voice.

Claire shook her head and for some reason felt ashamed. “No, not right now,” she said.
She had never shown in New York.
“But soon, I hope.”

“I know you,” Greta announced importantly. “I read about you somewhere. You're one of the ‘New Feminists.' ”

“As opposed to an old one,” Claire said, wryly. The article had been about her and four other women artists whose work explored issues that related to being female. Aside from the fact that being deemed a feminist was the kiss of death for any artist these days, the article had been published in
Artforum,
which in itself had been something of a career feat.

“What the hell
is
feminism, anyway?” Joe said. “Would somebody please explain it to me?”

“Feminism?”

“It's a seventies term,” he said with distaste. “I don't see anybody out there burning their Wonderbra.”

“I'll tell you about feminism,” Greta said. “It's supposed to protect us from assholes like you.”

Candace blurted a laugh.

“I'm serious,” he said. “What does it actually
mean
—feminism?” He spit the word out like soggy bread.

“Equality,” Claire said simply. “Basic provisions for women, like fair pay.”

“Respect,” Greta proclaimed.

“The word's a relic,” Joe said. “Our kids, for example—I would bet they don't have a clue what it means.”

“I would probably agree with that,” Greta said, then leaned into Claire's ear and whispered, “My daughter's too busy giving blow jobs to feel discriminated against.”

The comment put her off—she remembered Teddy describing Monica Travers as the girl with the “big mouth,” which Claire had naively misinterpreted as a girl who wasn't shy about speaking her mind—perhaps times
had
changed. She found herself wondering if Teddy had ever had a blow job—they'd never discussed it—it wasn't something she liked to think about. She'd never admit to it, of course, but the idea of her son's penis in some girl's mouth made her extremely uncomfortable.

Joe shrugged. “The world is different now, the economy, the politics. Everything's different. It's a different playing field.”

“Oh, yeah, it's different all right,” Claire said. “Not good different, just different.”

“I know I'm generalizing,” Joe continued, “but the truth is people don't like words like
feminism
anymore. It sounds, oh, I don't know,
pedestrian.
”

“Yeah, like the word
vagina,
” Claire said. “Most people don't like that word either.” Claire and Greta laughed, and Candace laughed too.

“Solidarity!” Greta said, raising her glass.

“What makes you think men and women are equal in the first place?” Joe said.

Some of the other men at the table snickered.

“You're in a mood tonight,” Candace said to him.

“Sexual tension 101,” Greta muttered to Claire.

“Look,” he said, backpedaling. “You know it just as much as I do. Look at yourselves—look at the way you starve yourselves, the way you dress, the shoes you wear with the skinny heels. Your tit jobs, your Botox. You think that makes you equal?”

“It's complicated,” Claire conceded.

“Yeah, it's complicated all right. Just for argument's sake—and at the risk of sounding misogynistic, which I'm sincerely
not—
let's say a war broke out right here, right now. Who do you think would take control?” He didn't wait for an answer—apparently he didn't want one, and finished off his glass of wine. “You girls would be running around like ants in a puddle, waiting for someone to tell you what to do. It's biological. Protection of the species and all that—but you know I'm right.” He poured himself another glass of wine then held up the empty bottle, signaling to the waiter to bring another. His face was flushed, he'd broken a sweat. “We're not the same,” he said, looking right at her. “You're weaker. Admit it.”