The Affairs of Others: A Novel Read online

  He made his pitch to me in a very considered way. He said he was staying at a place down the road he did not much care for. Family had provided it for him, which was kind, but it was not for him. “Too many people lining up just to park themselves in front of the TV. The food has no flavor, the windows are dirty, and everything is covered in plastic.” He’d passed by my building on his walks and wondered if I had a room. I said I did, though I wasn’t looking for tenants just yet. He nodded at that and offered me six months’ rent, cash up front. “No one has to know,” he said, smiling at me with his eyes, “but us.” I couldn’t make out any alcohol on him and he did not look away from my face once. His body looked sturdy for a man of his years, and his stance on shortish legs was wider than most people’s as if he expected the ground to buck up beneath him. It didn’t seem like he was one to complain if it did; he was simply ready. He breathed through his nose; it was audible but steady. When I hesitated, he stuck his big mottled hand at me. It was alive with blue veins. He let it hang there until I shook it.

  He wanted the fourth-floor apartment. It was my smallest, with lower ceilings than the rest, but it wasn’t from modesty that he picked it when I gave him the tour; it was for the view. Out of one western-facing window, to the back of the building, there was a slice of the New York Harbor on offer. Another gave him some uninterrupted sky. He went back and forth between those two windows a few times, gauging to make sure he got the sights right. It was then something told me he would die here, in this one-bedroom apartment, and that was what he was deciding, whether it would be okay. I wanted to take our agreement back then—a seam of panic folded my stomach in two—but I didn’t. I took his money and lied to his daughter, the family to whom he’d referred, when she came round fuming and pointing fingers in my face. Her father and I had an agreement, I told her without hesitating, and I had no intention of going back on it. She’d had him in an assisted living facility. His various pension payments and social security were meant to go there, not to me. I had simply replied, “What a shame.”

  I could not explain that I understood better than she did where he really lived, in Then—when he was most alive. I also knew that he’d never trouble me, or not intentionally, and whatever my relationship with my other tenants, he and I would never quarrel over hot water or light fixtures.

  I climbed the stairs to his apartment now. His door was never locked, though I had cautioned him about that. I knocked, but he had his radio going at a volume that was meant to keep him awake. I knocked again, then went in. He’d tucked himself into his wood-and-leather recliner beside a fragile end table that gave legs to the radio bellowing the tide report. He looked too stony in his sleep until the third or fourth breath, when a snuffing exhale rattled him and made his fingers twitch. He was dressed in worn black boots with rugged soles, work pants, and a wool sweater, a favorite outfit of his and the same one he wore in a photo I’d seen, taken years ago, in which he gave a low, two-finger salute from a ferry wheelhouse. The windows of his apartment were all opened. While it was mild for March, it was not warm. I shut all but one of the windows, and that I left open a crack. I checked to see if there was food in the fridge. I found unspoiled milk, some cheddar cheese, and white bread tied tight into formation. In his cabinet were four cans of soup, two of which I had dated with pen on another visit. I surveyed the kitchen and living room area (which were joined and separated by a granite-topped island I had installed) for signs. There was an unwashed bowl and spoon in the sink. The nautical charts he hung on the walls with tape were crooked, but they’d always been.

  I smelled for something rotten or sick or dirty, but there was nothing, or nothing I could smell; then I left, shutting the door I’d oiled and re-oiled quietly behind me. He had reassured me again, by doing so little.

  PARTY GREETINGS

  ON SATURDAY, THE NIGHT BEFORE George was to leave, a party formed overhead. Music. Laughing. Protests. Exclamations. More laughing. I counted at least ten or so bodies by way of voices and feet. Edith Piaf cried out for them—strident, demanding—until she was replaced with the bland bass lines of what I took to be house or lounge music. Aromas of garlic and thyme and onions came to me; and I made out lamb and baked cheese, sharp and oily. I had a bottle of Veuve Clicquot for George. Chilled. I had been invited upstairs but had not yet decided to go. I heard my elevator in use—the mechanical effort begun with a shudder and then the hum that comes with its duty, a vibration in the walls. The tenants mostly used it when they had things to carry. Mr. Coughlan used it when he could admit that he was tired. I heard more doors opening and shutting. The entrance door and others. Agitation had its way of spreading. Footfalls tapping, the floors continually adjusting. Hellos hallooing. There’s a certain pitch to party greetings. It aims high; it’s grateful and hopeful. I had an ear for it from years of watching my mother throw parties. No matter how many times she’d been disappointed, she still believed a party could be transformative, could suspend time and place.

  I knew I could not pass into the party upstairs unseen, but I could wait until just after the crescendo; a few departures, a slowing or cessation of moving feet, the adjusting of furniture. They might turn down the music at this stage, too, or switch it to a vocalist whose singing went well with port or cognac, but then maybe I was expecting too much of them.

  When I judged that moment had arrived, I combed my hair. Dusted my face with some powder. I wore an Irish sweater and jeans. I had not worn a dress or forgone clothes designed for comfort in ages. I was going to be polite, not to impress, though I did search out a Chanel lipstick sent by my mother in a care package of assorted female encouragements. Red; it smelled of sweet clay and roses.

  I am just passing through, I told myself, I am a voyager, a ghost, a spy—my mother teased me with this when I used to trail her around. A spy. She said it with exasperation and love. The lipstick: Yes, it conjured my mother, who debated every detail before her parties, the food, the glassware, the quality of the light in the rooms of the Victorian in which we lived. At the end of her preparations, she’d dress hastily in an outfit laid out earlier in the day.

  I grew up in southern Connecticut, in a bedroom town so pale and post-collegiate you’d think Cheever made it out of whole cloth. The population’s imagination was only big enough to try for variations on normalcy and levels of acceptable wealth. But my mother, who grew up in Northampton, a university town in Massachusetts, went in for clothes that were beaded, flared, or crocheted. She had vivid silks and authentic kimonos. She served canapés and fromage de chèvre. She liked museums and Manhattan at night and dancing till her feet bled. And she had short waves of honey blond hair, cleavage, and big violet eyes given to surprise, to teasing. I inherited none of these things. She was high even before the champagne was opened and then she was flying, not of the earth, certainly not of that town and its family cars and duck shoes, or determined not to be. My father didn’t care for the parties much. That people became more interested in him as he rose in the world of New York finance necessitated that he become more reserved in social situations. He drank a few fingers of scotch and he watched my mother for signs that she’d had too much. When that moment arrived, and it did more often than not, he’d call me from my room or wherever I was holed up, and together we’d begin clearing the plates, offering coffee, washing what we could. We’d turn the music down; we didn’t refill their glasses or their cups. We rushed the party along so that we might have her back, to ourselves. We were cordial, but we hated all those people at a certain point. We hated them for their greed, for the mess they left us, and for the state the night left my mother in. When the house was still again, she fell into belligerence, carping. In part we could thank the wine for that, but more she could not bear the quiet now that she’d been elsewhere.

  * * *

  George’s door was left ajar. I pushed into an altered space. There was nothing but candles for light, long and short shadows thrown everywhere, dancing occasionally with a current of air
caught in this flame or that. What you couldn’t see in George’s apartment now was how much he subscribed to neatness. Over the length of his stay with me, he had replaced objects of convenience, bought in grad school, with carefully chosen ones, some new, some antique, but all with alert lines and architecture to them. He’d had bookshelves built in to accommodate this collection. We’d split the cost. He was proud of his brown leather couch with its shapely mahogany legs; there was also a Mission floor lamp with a leaden glass shade—he’d called me up to see it the day after he brought it home. I assumed he wanted to point out a problem with the apartment, an electrical outlet, the toilet; that was more like it. Instead, he asked me to look at his lamp and so I did, the micaed bronze of the stand, the strong geometry of the shade’s design, its weight. He was quiet until he said it reminded him of the men he used to fall for—no loud frills, solid, but elegant. I remember he added “unmistakable,” though at the time I was caught on “used to,” as though he was aligning himself with the likes of me or Mr. Coughlan.

  He preferred muted colors, and he left empty, navigable spaces between objects. Even his plants were not allowed to fraternize with one another; each had its place, its part in the layout.

  I had come to think in his case that the impulse toward spareness was an invitation, an optimism, leaving room for others or, on days when life felt too crowded, for the pleasure of nothing at all.

  That night, all the empty spaces were filled—with a body or its shadow, a chair brought from his kitchen or elsewhere, an end table yanked out of place to support a drink, a smeared plate, a cigarette in an improvised ashtray. And then there were Hope’s things, a shawl over the couch back, fat plush throw pillows, a frowzy ficus abandoned in a corner.

  George stood to greet me, followed by Hope. He took my right hand in both of his, and she laid the full flat of her hand on my shoulder; their manner was warm and yet still charged with the party. Hope’s hair had begun to come undone in a few tendrils, and her eyeliner had begun to blur. It looked as if she’d been cleaning dishes or making love, and George’s face shined with sentiment. I might have been a long-lost someone, or if they were a couple rather than friends, I might have been the person who introduced them. George took the champagne from me and then showed it to his guests—“A classic,” he announced. “Ahhh,” one or two faces replied. In the half-light I made out a lean middle-aged woman with black hair, black kohl around her eyes, and layers of black lace riding down her body. Her look was Castilian and a touch goth; it was old-fashioned but severe enough to be modern. In any light I could see her skin was so white it hinted at blues. Then there was a trio of men—two a couple, dressed similarly, muscled similarly, and one lone man—short and rounded but distinguished by way of the gray in his neat hair and the crispness of his clothes; his face was as mobile as a clown’s. This man said of my gift champagne, translating its name, “The widow … People love her.”

  “I have always liked it,” I ventured, forgetting to smile.

  “What’s not to like,” he said, though his tone argued with his words.

  “This is Darren,” said George. “An old friend of mine. Don’t mind him. He’s been drinking.”

  “And smoking—” Darren held up a joint. “And I have enough for everyone.”

  “This is my landlady, Celia.” The couple looked at one another with mirth as if Darren had been caught in a faux pas. Landlady meant officialdom to many. I might wag my head or explain the fire code, but instead, I said, “Darren’s very generous,” and smiled.

  “George will open that and you’ll sit by me.” Hope took my hand. I let her. The party had grown into its own small knot of confidences, and I was a disruption. Not a fatal one but one that required more cordial interest than the hour of the party provided for. Hope was keeping me safe until I settled into the room with them.

  I whispered, “I can’t stay.”

  She whispered back, “Nonsense.”

  I was parked in a wingchair; I did not recognize it; Hope sat upright in a kitchen chair. Her posture did not look inconvenienced by it. In fact it must be said she had admirable posture.

  “I am Josephina.” The dark-haired woman leaned in to shake my hand.

  Hope explained, “Josephina taught Spanish at St. Ann’s for a little while. To my daughter. I taught art, not there, before the kids, at—”

  “Not for me, that place,” Josephina declared. “So full of effort, to be special, to be more special. Even the parents compete for notice. They hold up their children like mirrors.” She threw her chin toward me, pursed her lips, a pantomime of exasperation. Short-lived. Her accent was Spanish. Madrid maybe, but then I was no judge of these things.

  “Hey, I was one of those parents,” said Hope.

  “You do not belong to them. You know that.” Then to me, Josephina explained, “Before you came, we were discussing who we’d like to fuck. I mean people who we are not able to.” This was matter-of-fact, languid, not a dare. “I thought of Clive Owen, but I’d have to tie him down. I think maybe he is wild.”

  “He’s no bottom!” squealed Darren. His volume jolted everyone and the place they’d agreed to be—subdued mostly. He adjusted as he lit his joint, and I wondered how I might explain a sudden departure. A sick tenant? Another engagement? All I knew was that I couldn’t stay.

  “What I mean is that I don’t think he’d consent.” He dragged in and dragged in, squinting like he was playing cowboy. As he held it, he half-stood and reached from his spot on the corner of the couch clear across the coffee table, over a disorder of cheese and bread, to me. He exhaled his smoke in my direction. “You?” This seemed at once an offer of the joint and a query about this Clive Owen, an actor, but I could not place his face. Darren maintained his position. This was a dare. He wouldn’t retreat. Was he affronted by my presence so late in their evening or was he the sort who had to test everyone he met? Who had to be coaxed from his derision?

  I didn’t intend to smoke, but I reached for the joint—I could not give him the satisfaction of my being demure or awkward. A woman like me does not have to suffer fools at all. Not anymore. But before I could take it, Hope grabbed for it. “I am a woman on the edge. Let me, Darren. Don’t you all know that you are supposed to treat me as if I’m newly widowed? As if I’ve been shipwrecked?”

  I did not pause to consider if Hope knew I was a widow or not; what she said and did right then was about altruism. She’d seen me hesitate.

  “Ahhhh, he’ll have his young wine,” said Josephina. “He’ll get drunk on it until he is sick and sorry and come back for you. On his knees. A beggar.”

  “If you’ll have him,” said Darren crisply. “I say you move on. He’s an embarrassment. I mean that’s one tiresome trope. Like his twenty-something bag of flesh is different from all the others.”

  Hope gave a version of a laugh. “Do women who have been married for twenty-five years move on? Where do we go?” She stared into the smoke for a minute. No one hurried her. “Cary Grant is dead, isn’t he?”

  “He’s beyond dead,” intoned Darren.

  “I’ve thought about taking Eva Marie Saint’s place on that train at the end of North by Northwest. I’d slide right in.” She extended the joint to Josephina, bypassing me.

  “Darren’s pot gives me migraines.” Josephina grimaced.

  “Everything gives you migraines,” he said.

  “Oh, my little prick Darren.”

  “Cunty Joe.”

  Josephina laughed open-mouthed at this and took a small puff.

  “I go back and forth about Cary.” Darren straightened his posture and his tone. He could change on a dime. “I mean, would he be something in bed or too controlled? Could he abandon himself? The guy was some low-budget trapeze artist before he became a studio prize. He’s a con man, really, so it would have to be performance. He probably didn’t know the difference.”

  “But isn’t that what we all want?” asked one of the two men.

  “That’s Bl
ake,” Hope whispered to me. “He runs a gallery I can’t resist. And his partner beside him is Andrew.”

  “I mean if you’re good at the performance, if it’s seamless, if you’re that confident?” Blake asked.

  “Well,” Hope said, her voice sad, but it rallied, “if he was with one of those starlets, they’d both be performing, right? It would be sexy to watch, surely, but I can’t say whether it would be sexy to experience. They’d persuade each other to their fine looks and fine lines, but would they—”

  “Inevitably,” said Josephina.

  “Really? Why?”

  “They’d believe it. That’s how good they are. As actors. So they believe. And bodies, after all,” she said, running her fingers along the white inside of her arm, “aren’t hard to fool.”

  “And you, Celia?” Darren asked.

  Among the things my mother and I enjoyed doing together was watching old films; VCR double classics, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, The Awful Truth, Notorious; scenes replayed; tears on tissues, vivid applause. I didn’t feel compelled to see contemporary stuff much anymore; it all felt recycled, dull. I said, “He let himself be wild, uncontrolled in his roles. Ugly…” I looked at Darren. “Sometimes. He had to be drawing from his own experience, his authority, passions—that’s a private place or it should be.”

  Hope said, “I hope you’re right. That’s a better way to think of it, him, anybody. That we conserve our private places…”

  Darren raised an eyebrow. “But that kind of acting is really about control. Maybe the question is just subjective—how sexy is control?”