“I’ll be fine.” Lambent and resilient Mother. I’ve seldom seen her like this.
“You’ve never told me any of this.”
“No, I’ve never told you.”
A long silence, during which my mother makes a face at a bad pistachio.
“She must be a knockout.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. You’ve been killing time here, haven’t you? You should leave.”
She was right. I was killing time.
I wish her a Happy New Year, just in case we don’t see each other tonight.
Yes, yes, she says, but she knows there’s hardly a chance I’ll show up. At least I hope you won’t. We hug. “I’ve never seen you like this,” she says.
“Like this, how?”
“I don’t know. Different. Good. Maybe even happy.”
On our way to the door, she turns off the light in the dining room, then in the kitchen. She’ll head back into her bedroom the moment she closes the door behind me, like Ulysses’ mother slinking back among the shades. This is what I’ve come to, she seemed to say.
I heave a sigh of relief when I finally shut the door behind me.
As usual, I reach into my pocket and hand the doorman his annual tip. The second doorman, who doesn’t know me, receives something as well, just in case Mother forgot to tip them.
•
The gust of wind that greets me as soon as the doorman opens the front door could not brace me more or stir greater joy. It shakes off the stuffy and oppressive torpor weighing on me ever since I entered Mother’s home.
I’ve always loved the lights of the city in the winter, the view of the midtown buildings towering over the skyline, the hail of brightness erupting like a galactic storm over Manhattan, while the sweep of weaker lights elbowing the old residential buildings on Central Park West speak of quiet, contented lives and quiet, contented New Year’s parties. I love watching the surfeit of lights blanket the city, something unseen and unrivaled since the night Pharos beaconed antiquity and mariners came out to watch, saying, There is nothing can rival this in the world.
If I were a good son, I’d have met Clara ages ago and brought her here. If I were a good son, I’d have picked Clara up earlier today and said, I want you to meet my mother, because I wish he’d been alive, he would have loved you. With her, for an instant, I’d walk into his study and disturb the restless sleep of his things: his Pelikan, his Caran d’Ache, his scowling Turks, his glasses, and she’d rouse them back to life, the way she’d shaken the slumber of my kitchen, my rug, my bathrobe and made me find love in my things, my life.
I’d bring her in, as in the old days, and, before introducing her to the guests, simply take her onto the balcony and ask her to help me cover the wine labels. What are we doing? she asks. We’re hiding the names of the wines. “I know!” she replies. “I meant, What are we doing?” I know exactly what she’s asking, even if for a while I’m pretending not to, because I find it no less difficult to tell her why I wanted to bring her to my parents’ home than it was to ask her to stop the car and take a quick walk with me to my father’s grave, because there are so many things I find so difficult to ask, Clara, because in asking the small and simpler things I reveal more than when I ask for the big ones. And if he’s not there to meet you any longer, well, let’s drop in anyway tonight, before you and I get naked together, and we’ll uncork Mom’s Champagne, and if staunch Don Juan happens to be there tonight, we’ll be a merry foursome as we toast the New Year and then rush back to 106th Street, leaving la Veuve Clicquot and good Dom Pérignon to sort out the good from the bad in their lives. In the cab, I hope you’re not zombified, I’ll say. I am so not zombified, you’ll say.
I am so not zombified. It sounded just like Clara.
Say it again, Clara, I am so not zombified.
I am so not zombified. Happy?
I am, I am.
The wine store where I’ve been hoping to buy a few rare bottles for tonight’s party turns out to be mobbed; the line horseshoes the length of the counter. I should have gone in with Olaf. He was right to panic this afternoon.
Skip the bottles, then. Flowers? I’ll send flowers tomorrow. Actually I should have sent flowers last week. Skip the flowers as well.
All I want is to ride the M5 bus as I’d done last week during the snowstorm, scarcely able to see anything outside, and yet grateful for the snow, which seemed to expire in exhausted, pallid puffs no sooner than it brushed against our widows. From time to time, through the lighted Riverside Park, I’d catch a glimpse of ice floes bearing down the Hudson like stranded elks quietly working their way downstream. Crick, crack, crack. Tonight I won’t even go to Clara’s apartment but will head straight to Hans and Gretchen’s. I’ll get off at 112th Street, as though by mistake again, try to lose my bearings as I did that night when I walked up the hill by the statue of Samuel J. Tilden and, for a second once again, think myself in France because of a St. Bernard, or because the city seems so strangely medieval tonight, or because a confluence of dream making and premonition has made me feel I’d stepped into a film of my own projection where snow falls so peacefully that everything it touches feels at once spellbound and imperishable. I’ll arrive at the party, be greeted by Gretchen, who never budges from the entrance door, hand my coat to the coat check, make sure I keep the stub this time, dawdle about in the living room by the piano before ordering a drink, stand by the Christmas tree exactly where I stood a week ago, and who knows, perhaps we’ll play at being total strangers, because she likes this as much as I do, and while she’s about to reach out to shake my hand, I’ll interrupt and say, Aren’t you Printz’s friend, to which she’ll say, And you must be the voice from last night’s télyfön? I am, I am. And we’ll sit by the same window, and she’ll bring me something to eat, and together we’ll roam from room to room in this large apartment and drink something light like punch, though we hate punch, and we’d head downstairs, as we did last time, through the crowded staircase, open the door leading out onto the terrace, and stand there together, watching the New Jersey shoreline, trying to catch the same beam circling over Manhattan and think of Bellagio, Byzantium, St. Petersburg, and remember we saw eternity that night.
I see the evening unfold before me as all wishes do when we know they’re about to be granted: the walk from the balcony to the kitchen, then upstairs to the greenhouse, Pavel and Pablo, the three Graeaes, and Muffy Mitford herself with two daughters no one can stand as my mind drifts past the mound by Samuel J. Tilden’s statue, past last week’s blizzard, past Rohmer or the small slate-roofed town of Saint-Rémy, which had risen before me on the borders of the Hudson to suggest a floating city invented for Clara and me.
I want to step up onto the balcony with her again and watch her stub out her cigarette in the snow, watch her foot kick it all the way down to the cars lining up in double-parked formation, watch the snow close in around us like luminous white hands, timeless and spellbound. And there would be so many temptations along the way. Rollo would surely parley for Inky again: For the love of God, woman! And who knows, Inky himself might show up to plead, lean, dashing figure that he cuts, as he’d lead her away to a corner unknown to most guests, and all I’d do then is stand and wonder whether I should intervene or simply stand and wonder, trying to make out if the thing between them has dissolved into friendship, or hasn’t dissolved at all, or whether she couldn’t care less if he hurled himself off the terrace, friendship or no friendship; friendship there’s never any after love, scorched love, burn all bridges and the docks along with them. We’d stand together among the others, and suddenly Clara would ask me to give her a couple of minutes and, joining Orla and Beryl in the middle of the room, would, without warning, start to sing an aria from Der Rosenkavalier, while I’m trying to look the other way, because I know myself, and one more second of this singing and I’ll burst out crying, and if I do start crying, well, let it happen, she’ll come up to me and let the same hand that had held me so savagely the other day rest on my face and say, This song’s for you, Printz, this my overdue Christmas present for the man who may just love me less than I love him. And I know myself and know I won’t be able to resist, but will rush her into the crowded coat-room and, pressing her against a row of perfumed mink coats, ask her point-blank: Do you want to have children with me even though I’ve no idea where my life is headed, yes or no? Yes. Do you think we’ll be happy together? Yes. At what point does this fantasy end? Don’t know, never did know. . Have I answered all your questions? Yes. Are you sure? I think so. She’d ask me for another minute, and I’d say Fine, and watch her run off elsewhere in the house, and then I’d wait and wait and wait some more, until it would finally dawn on me, as it had last week, that she’d simply disappeared. Inky. Of course! I should have known.