“You heard about that, did you?”
She turned her head with an air of heroic exertion and rolled her eyes. “What do you think—we just talk about hooking up and homework?”
“No, actually, that particular illusion has been pretty well shattered over the last few months.”
As he drove in from the airport, the sudden sight of the skyline etched against a milky sky filled him with anticipation and melancholy, all of its rich personal and historical significance reduced to a vague melancholy shot through with a single yearning. Even the absence of the twin monoliths, and the ghostly smudge over the tip of the island, seemed inextricably linked in his mind with Corrine.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Ashley said, gazing out the window of the Town Car. “I never really noticed them until they were gone.”
Shortly before noon, they arrived at the apartment, where Sasha’s assistant informed them that she was running a few errands after her Pilates class and would meet them at the restaurant. Luke, relieved that their first encounter would take place in public, retreated to the library, closing the door behind him.
Corrine picked up on the sixth ring, the one just before it went to voice mail.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Wait a minute…. No, honey, the blue one. I’m sorry, let Mommy get it.”
“I hate that I can’t just come to you now.”
“I hate it, too…. Jeremy, stop that right now!”
“But I guess that’s out of the question.”
“Mommy doesn’t hate anyone; she’s just talking to a friend. Hold on.”
He waited as the din receded.
“Oh hell, I’m sorry. Where are you?”
“I’m at the apartment.”
“It’s almost worse, knowing you’re so close.”
“I know.”
“I can’t get away until three. And I have to be back by five. Kid Christmas thing.”
“Maybe I could meet you downtown. It will give us more time. I could get a room at the Grand.”
“I don’t know, I think that would almost be harder.” In a whisper, she added, “If I take my clothes off, no way am I going to make it home on time. You’re going to have to wait till tomorrow night. Gotta run—I’m hearing major combat out there. Meet me at Evelyn’s. Around three-fifteen. Love you.”
“This should be fun,” Ashley said drolly, as they drove down Fifth in the cab, passing the skating rink, the Plaza looming on one side, FAO Schwarz on the other.
Shoppers and tourists swarmed the sidewalks, but for Luke the Christmas spirit had yet to kick in. “Let’s just try to keep your mother happy,” Luke said.
“You wait. I guarantee you the first thing she’ll say is I’ve gained; then she’ll make some crack about southern cooking.”
“You look great,” Luke said. Although it occurred to him that if she’d wanted to court her mother’s approval, she would’ve worn something a little dressier than a turtleneck over cargo pants and those big Eskimo-style boots—Uggs. He’d almost said something, then selfishly decided to leave the provocation intact; he cherished his new intimacy with his daughter and was unwilling to squander his capital. For his part, he’d changed into his old uniform: a bird’s-eye suit from Dunhill; a spread-collared shirt with red, white, and green stripes that he thought of as his Christmas shirt, and a solid red Charvet tie.
Shawarma, the official greeter, shook Luke’s hand and steered them gently toward the coat check. “Mr. McGavock, Miss McGavock, we haven’t seen you lately.”
Luke felt that there was an elegiac note to the occasion—as if somehow this were to be his last such visit. Coats safely checked, Shawarma led them the few short steps to the desk, where Bruce, the severely tailored, thin-lipped captain, greeted them and led the way into the front room, where a waiter pulled out their table, which was jammed up against its neighbors. Space was at a premium here in the front room, where the term rubbing elbows became literal and where those unfamiliar with public transport experienced at least a simulacrum of its intimate charm.
“You want the inside?” Luke asked.
Ashley shook her head, choosing to have her back to the room, the next best thing to being absent, leaning back in her chair to take in the ceilingscape.
“Boys and their toys,” she said, shaking her head at the overhead collection of miniature planes, trains, trucks, boats, and sports memorabilia that commemorated the empires and accomplishments of patrons past and present.
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“I don’t know. It just makes you think that maybe there’s not much difference between men and boys.”
Luke took in the crowd, the overfed men in their Savile Row suits, the svelte women spangled with gold and gemstones, all bearing gifts—fat robin’s egg blue boxes from Tiffany’s and flat black boxes from Gucci sitting on the tables and piled beside the chairs. He waved to Charlie Braithwaite, a colleague from his Morgan days. It all seemed a little unreal to him, like some tableau from the distant past; the center of Luke’s city had shifted south, to a downtown loft he’d never seen but which he’d measured and furnished in his mind, to a bar on Ninth Street called Evelyn’s, where they had trysted before and where he would be meeting her in two hours. His current surroundings came into sharper focus when he spotted Casey Reynes at a table of blondes in the middle of the room, sitting between Nina Griscom and Patricia Duff, rising as she spotted him and bouncing over.
“Hello, Luke, Ashley. You’re looking wonderful, sweetie. I didn’t know you two were back.”
Luke did his best to rise, pinned as he was behind the table. “We just got in,” he said, mildly fearful that some indiscretion would escape Casey’s carmine lips. “Sasha’s joining us. The annual Christmas lunch.”
“Isn’t it festive?” she said, gesturing around the room. “Ashley, you look… super. Amber will be so happy to see you. You must call her.”
Ashley nodded miserably, having already announced her intention to avoid her friends for the duration of the visit.
“Come over and say hello to the girls when you get a chance,” Casey said to Luke, fluttering her hand in farewell.
“That’s exactly why I didn’t want to do this,” Ashley said, sucking on a bread stick.
“She means well.”
“She doesn’t even have a clue,” Ashley said.
“Did I ever tell you my dad brought me here, the first year I was at Deerfield?” He had, of course, but he was groping, and Christmastime allowed for formulas and bromides; at any rate, she seemed inclined to indulge him.
“I miss Grandpa Mac,” she said.
“It was a kind of rite of passage in our family. Your great-grandfather used to come here when it was a speakeasy. Dad always ordered the chicken hash, which his father had always ordered. I ordered the steak tartare just to be different and because a character in some sophisticated novel I’d read had ordered it and I remembered the name. When my dad asked me if I knew what it was, I said I did, which wasn’t true, so he held his tongue. They brought a plate of raw beef to the table and I choked the whole thing down, then went to the bathroom and threw it all up. I realized later that he must have known, but he didn’t say a thing.”
“You never told me that part of the story.”
“Later, when the choir came around to sing carols, I thought it was all kind of corny. Dad singing ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing.’ And then the choir sang ‘Dixie’—you know how they do sometimes—and when Dad stood up, I was so embarrassed, I wanted to crawl under the table. I thought I’d die of mortification. Here we are at the most sophisticated restaurant in New York, and Dad’s standing up for the old Confederate anthem.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I slid low in my banquette and pretended I didn’t know him.”
“That was kind of creepy of you.”
“I’d think my teenaged daughter, of all people, might empathize with my creepy teenage self.”
&nbs
p; “Wrong.”
“It was the sixties. Well, the seventies. Close enough. Neil Young was singing ‘Southern Man.’ Peter Fonda had been blown off his chopper by southern rednecks.”
“Your dad was cool. You told me yourself he was all involved with civil rights and stuff. I don’t know why you’re so ashamed of being from the South.”
“I’m not ashamed.”
“What’s the matter?” she said, turning around, following his gaze, only to see Bernie Melman standing in the doorway with his wife and daughter. “Oh fuck.”
Luke was too distracted to chastise her; as the Melmans were easing themselves into the front booth while accepting the hearty obsequiousness of the staff, Sasha appeared in the doorway, an arm’s length away—a potential collision had Bruce not been chatting with the billionaire.
A hush descended like snow, almost imperceptibly at first, as Sasha took them in, and gradually whitened the room. Luke couldn’t help being impressed with how she followed through, stepping forward rather than retreating, kissing Caroline, Melman’s daughter by his first marriage, on both cheeks before the courtly captain stepped in and offered Sasha his arm, nodding toward her family. She smiled and waved semaphorically while he led her across the attentive room.
As he observed the broad stylization of her expression and her theatrical wave, Luke’s suspicion that Sasha’d somehow engineered this coincidence gave way to an unexpected pang of sympathy for his wife, who had clearly been caught off guard by the encounter with the reunited Melmans. Sasha’s social mask was impeccable, but he could read discomfort in the stiffness of her posture and the lack of fluidity in her gait as she crossed the room, reminding him somehow of a young model taking her first nervous stroll down the runway. He imagined she was more surprised than others in the room to have found her putative lover dining with his wife.
The awkwardness was briefly dispelled by the rituals of greeting and the mechanics of moving the table.
Their daughter allowed herself to be hugged.
“Ashley, you look wonderful. Hello, Luke.”
“Sasha, you’re looking beautiful, as always.”
Eventually, they were seated, Sasha sharing the banquette with Luke and waving to her friends and rivals at the middle table. She was dressed conservatively, Upper East Side matronly, in a tweedy vintage Chanel suit, accessorized with a single string of grape-size pearls.
“Here we are at last,” she said, beaming across the table at Ashley.
“Now can we leave?” Ashley said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. So tell me everything. How’s Nora?”
“Gran’s cool.”
Sasha waved to the waiter. “Could I get a glass of chardonnay?”
“Catch that buzz,” Ashley said.
“It’s called social drinking, darling.”
“No wonder they call you a socialite.”
“Better to light up a room than cast a pall over it, my sweet.”
“Shall we order?” Luke said, hoping to accelerate the pace of the ensuing trial, which threatened to become contentious shortly after the arrival of the appetizers, when Sasha asked about the status of prep school applications.
Ashley glanced across the table at her father. “I was kind of thinking I might postpone that decision for a year,” she said. “Don’t look at Dad that way. I haven’t even told him about it yet.”
“I think it would be lovely to have you at home for another year,” Sasha said.
“Well, actually—”
The arrival of the choir, a quintet of uniformed Salvation Army officers, blessedly interrupted this debate. Luke wasn’t quite ready to catch Sasha up on all the news: that her daughter wanted to go to the high school in Franklin, for instance, or that he planned to move out of the family residence.
Peace on earth, and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled…
A wave of sentimentality engulfed Luke as he listened to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “Silent Night,” a strange cocktail of joy and melancholy that stirred a hundred bright and fading memories and associations—as if he had just opened a box of ornaments for the tree. Whatever contentment he felt was compromised by sadness for the lost family of his childhood and for the broken promise of this one. He felt his eyes welling, charged with nostalgia for Christmases past, even as he experienced an unholy yearning to share the rituals of this and future seasons with someone not present—someone with her own family, with her own history and traditions, all of which seemed at this freighted moment to weigh more than his own selfish desire.
In the wake of “Silent Night,” a restless buzz of conversation rising against the clatter of flatware on china seemed to indicate a general consensus in the front room that enough was enough. The choir pressed forward bravely with “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and followed up, evenhandedly, barely pausing for breath, with “Dixie.”
To Luke’s astonishment, Ashley rose and stood at attention—this seemed out of character for a girl who’d spent most of lunch trying to shrink under the table. Across the room, Isaac Caldwell, the publisher, did likewise, saluting her and placing his hand over his heart.
Ashley then held out her hand. “Come on, Dad.”
Sasha was not amused. She clenched her teeth, a pained expression manifesting itself through the serene paralysis of Botox.
Luke gestured toward the table, to indicate the difficulty of standing, before relenting under the pressure of his daughter’s pout of entreaty. He pushed the table forward and climbed out, silently mouthing an apology to the vaguely familiar gentleman on his left, and took his stand beside Ashley, putting his arm around her as the choir looked away, looked away, looked away….
“For Grandpa Mac,” she whispered.
Luke glanced back at his wife, shrugging sheepishly. With a jaunty snap of his head, he invited her to join them, but Sasha shook her own head almost imperceptibly, forcing a smile of tolerant indulgence. Relieved when the final bars died away, he quickly resumed his seat. Look away indeed.
“Well, aren’t we the rebels,” Sasha said.
“Come on, Mom. It’s your heritage, too.”
“There’s a time and a place,” Sasha said. “Not to mention that I saw Al Sharpton checking his coat out front. He’s probably sitting right behind us.”
“Don’t worry,” Ashley said. “I saw them escort him to Siberia back there. They certainly wouldn’t want him sitting up here with the regulars.”
“Since when do you care about Al Sharpton?” Luke asked.
Sasha shrugged. “He’s actually very amusing.”
Her attention was suddenly diverted by the sight of Sylvia Melman kissing cheeks at Casey Reynes’s table, making a real show out of it, the twittering sound of her laugh piercing the room.
A young uniformed chorister was moving down the row of banquettes, collecting money. Luke found a fifty in his money clip and dropped it in the tambourine just as Sylvia loomed up behind Ashley, smiling over at him with her bone-china face and her bobbed nose, the tendons of her birdlike neck throbbing like suspension cables holding up multiple strands of black pearls.
“Luke, you’re an angel, really you are,” she said, her voice pitched to a volume that exceeded the demands of private conversation. “I just wanted to say my heart goes out to you.” She paused, placing a ropy diamond-studded hand on Ashley’s shoulder.
Luke glanced over at his wife, whose face was frozen in a gruesome smile. Was it actually possible that he’d just been publicly congratulated for being a stoic cuckold?
“Of course I heard all about the wonderful things you were doing down at Ground Zero. You’re an example to us all in these difficult times.”
He nodded, feeling a flush rise on his face as Sylvia patted Ashley’s shoulder. “Welcome back, dear,” she said to her. “We’re all pulling for you.” She blew Luke a parting kiss that completed her snub of Sasha and returned to her table, waving broadly as she went
.
“Now I know I’m back,” Ashley said.
Luke felt for Sasha’s hand under the table as the room buzzed like a hive of wasps. “Anybody for dessert?”
“Oh, why don’t you just order me a fucking glass of hemlock,” Sasha muttered, “and get it over with.”
“What’s hemlock?” Ashley asked.
“It’s what the Greeks used to poison people,” Luke explained.
“At least that would solve the problem of how to get out of here.”
“That’s very supportive, Ashley,” Sasha said.
The conversation seemed more than a little bizarre to Luke, predicated as it was on certain facts and suppositions that had never been openly acknowledged among the three of them. He signaled the waiter. “I think we should order a bottle of champagne,” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“A bottle of Krug, please. The 1989,” he added, “if you have it.”
“Very good, Mr. McGavock.”
“What exactly are we celebrating?” Sasha asked.
“Well, the fact that we’re alive, to start with. Looking back on the events of the fall, I’m feeling pretty lucky that the three of us are all sitting here.”
Sasha did not appear convinced.
“Of course, anyone who doesn’t necessarily feel the same way might at least want to go through the motions of being in a festive and celebratory mood for the benefit of the room.”
A glimmer of comprehension now crossed Sasha’s face.
“I think it would be much cooler,” Ashley said, “if we just flipped them all the bird.”
“Your father’s right,” Sasha said. “We should have a toast.”
The sommelier arrived with the champagne, complimenting Luke on his choice and making due fuss in its presentation, unwiring the cage and deftly twisting the cork, which debouched with a resonant, satisfying pop. He hesitated with the third glass, holding it in the air as he gave Luke an interrogatory look.