“Tell Corinne I’m all right.”
Otto started to speak again, but stopped.
“Otto, please.” Sharon looked at her hands, folded in her lap. “It’s all right.”
—
“I’ve sometimes wondered if it might not be possible, in theory, to remember something that you — I mean the aspect of yourself that you’re aware of — haven’t experienced yet,” William said later. “I mean, we really don’t know whether time is linear, so—”
“Would you stop that?” Otto said. “You’re not insane.”
“I’m merely speaking theoretically.”
“Well, don’t! And your memory has nothing to do with whether time is ‘really,’ whatever you mean by that, linear. It’s plenty linear for us! Cradle to grave? Over the hill? It’s a one-way street, my dear. My hair is not sometimes there and sometimes not there; we’re not getting any younger.”
At moments it occurred to Otto that what explained his appeal for William was the fact that they lived in the same apartment. That William was idiotically accepting, idiotically pliant. Perhaps William was so deficient in subtlety, so insensitive to nuance, that he simply couldn’t tell the difference between Otto and anyone else. “And, William — I wish you’d get back to your tennis.”
“It’s a bore. Besides, you didn’t want me playing with Jason, as I remember.”
“Well, I was out of my mind. And at this point it’s your arteries I worry about.”
“You know,” William said, and put his graceful hand on Otto’s arm, “I don’t think she’s any more unhappy than the rest of us, really, most of the time. That smile! I mean, that smile can’t come out of nowhere.”
—
There actually were no children to speak of. Corinne and Wesley’s “boys” put in a brief, unnerving appearance. When last seen, they had been surly, furtive, persecuted-looking, snickering, hulking, hairy adolescents, and now here they were, having undergone the miraculous transformation. How gratified Wesley must be! They had shed their egalitarian denim chrysalis and had risen up in the crisp, mean mantle of their class.
The older one even had a wife, whom Corinne treated with a stricken, fluttery deference as if she were a suitcase full of weapons-grade plutonium. The younger one was restlessly on his own. When, early in the evening, the three stood and announced to Corinne with thuggish placidity that they were about to leave (“I’m afraid we’ve got to shove off now, Ma”), Otto jumped to his feet. As he allowed his hand to be crushed, he felt the relief of a mayor watching an occupying power depart his city.
Martin’s first squadron of children (Maureen’s) weren’t even mentioned. Who knew what army of relatives, step-relatives, half-relatives they were reinforcing by now. But there were — Otto shuddered faintly — Martin’s two newest (Laurie’s). Yes, just as Corinne had said, they, too, were growing up. Previously indistinguishable wads of self-interest, they had developed perceptible features — maybe even characteristics; it appeared reasonable, after all, that they had been given names.
What on earth was it that William did to get children to converse? Whenever Otto tried to have a civilized encounter with a child, the child just stood there with its finger in its nose. But Martin’s two boys were chattering away, showing off to William their whole heap of tiresome electronics.
William was frowning with interest. He poked at a keyboard, which sent up a shower of festive little beeps, and the boys flung themselves at him, cheering, while Laurie smiled meltingly. How times had changed. Not so many years earlier, such a tableau would have had handcuffs rattling in the wings.
The only other representative of “the children,” to whom Corinne had referred with such pathos, was Martin’s daughter, Portia (Viola’s). She’d been hardly more than a toddler at last sight, though she now appeared to be about — what? Well, anyhow, a little girl. “What are the domestic arrangements?” Otto asked. “Is she living with Martin and Laurie these days, or is she with her mother?”
“That crazy Viola has gone back to England, thank God; Martin has de facto custody.”
“Speaking of Martin, where is he?”
“I don’t ask,” Corinne said.
Otto waited.
“I don’t ask,” Corinne said again. “And if Laurie wants to share, she’ll tell you herself.”
“Is Martin in the pokey already?” Otto asked.
“This is not a joke, Otto. I’m sorry to tell you that Martin has been having an affair with some girl.”
“Again?”
Corinne stalled, elaborately adjusting her bracelet. “I’m sorry to tell you she’s his trainer.”
“His trainer? How can Martin have a trainer? If Martin has a trainer, what can explain Martin’s body?”
“Otto, it’s not funny,” Corinne said with ominous primness. “The fact is, Martin has been looking very good, lately. But of course you wouldn’t have seen him.”
All those wives — and a trainer! How? Why would any woman put up with Martin? Martin, who always used to eat his dessert so slowly that the rest of them had been made to wait, squirming at the table, watching as he took his voluptuous, showy bites of chocolate cake or floating island long after they’d finished their own.
“I’m afraid it’s having consequences for Portia. Do you see what she’s doing?”
“She’s—” Otto squinted over at Portia. “What is she doing?”
“Portia, come here, darling,” Corinne called.
Portia looked at them for a moment, then wandered sedately over. “And now we’ll have a word with Aunt Corinne,” she said to her fist as she approached. “Hello, Aunt Corinne.”
“Portia,” Corinne said, “do you remember Uncle Otto?”
“And Uncle Otto,” Portia added to her fist. She regarded him with a clear, even gaze. In its glade of light and silence they encountered one another serenely. She held out her fist to him. “Would you tell our listeners what you do when you go to work, Uncle Otto?”
“Well,” Otto said, to Portia’s fist, “first I take the elevator up to the twentieth floor, and then I sit down at my desk, and then I send Bryan out for coffee and a bagel—”
“Otto,” Corinne said, “Portia is trying to learn what it is you do. Something I’m sure we’d all like to know.”
“Oh,” Otto said. “Well, I’m a lawyer, dear. Do you know what that is?”
“Otto,” Corinne said wearily, “Portia’s father is a lawyer.”
“Portia’s father is a global-money mouthpiece!” Otto said.
“Aunt Corinne is annoyed,” Portia commented to her fist. “Now Uncle Otto and Aunt Corinne are looking at your correspondent. Now they’re not.”
“Tell me, Portia,” Otto said; the question had sprung insistently into his mind, “what are you going to be when you grow up?”
Her gaze was strangely relaxing. “You know, Uncle Otto,” she said pensively to her fist, “people used to ask me that a lot.”
Huh! Yes, that was probably something people asked only very small children, when speculation would be exclusively a matter of amusing fantasy. “Well, I was only just mulling it over,” Otto said.
“Portia, darling,” Corinne said, “why don’t you run into the kitchen and do a cooking segment with Bea and Cleveland?”
“It’s incredible,” Otto said when Portia disappeared, “she looks exactly like Sharon did at that age.”
“Ridiculous,” Corinne said. “She takes after her father.”
Martin? Stuffy, venal Martin, with his nervous eyes and scoopy nose, and squashy head balanced on his shirt collar? Portia’s large, gray eyes, the flaxen hair, the slightly oversized ears and fragile neck recapitulated absolutely Sharon’s appearance in this child who probably wouldn’t remember ever having seen Sharon. “Her father?”