Any Place I Hang My Hat (9 page)

“I know In Depth is too … What’s the word? High-tone. It’s too high-tone for gossip.” At her second “high-tone,” Four laughed a single har from so deep in his chest it sounded like a pulmonary problem. Preshie did another toe tweak to show she was pleased by his appreciation, while Tatty did her standard gaze heavenward, her usual expression of disdain and embarrassment.

“Listen, Mrs. Damaris,” I said, “forget what’s acceptable at In Depth. I’m not too high-tone for gossip.” I took a sip of my second glass of Gevrey-Chambertin (the family never scrimping on anything that contained alcohol) and turned back to Four, knowing he retained every sordid story he’d ever heard. “How well do you know Thom Bowles, sir?”

“Knew his father better. Andover, Bowdoin. Us both. Few years older.” Four was only slightly more generous with complete sentences than he was with charity. I assumed he meant that William Bowles, Thom’s father, had been older than he by a few years.

“Even if I were tempted to write about that young man who’s claiming Senator Bowles is his father, your wife is right: In Depth wouldn’t publish it,” I reassured Four. “But just to satisfy my own curiosity, were there any murmurings back then as to why Thom Bowles left New York and moved out west?”

Four took a long sip from his plastic beer stein and hummed, “Hmm …” He hummed fairly often, probably to occupy himself until his neurons could manage to fire up in his alcohol-sodden brain.

“There was something!” Preshie said. Her eyes glinted from either excitement or her martini. “I remember, Four-y. You came home from the club and gave me an earful. About Thom and one of those girls.”

Tatty avoided looking at me, as she usually did at times like these, after M and D had set sail on their nightly voyage from conviviality to stupor. What she didn’t understand and could not explain was how come she’d returned home to this pair after both her failed marriages. Not for comfort. Although not overtly mean, they weren’t particularly nice to her. She claimed she’d come back for the kitchen where she made her cakes. I’d often suggested she was still seeking the love these two ought to have had for her, being her parents. But maybe it was simpler. Everyone needs a place to hang her hat.

“Yes, yes. Something,” Four replied to his wife. “Oh! The Puerto Rican girl.”

“Hispanic,” she corrected. “Unless you know for a fact she was from PR.”

“Hush, Preshie. Thinking.” Also slurring, but it was nearly seven and he’d been drinking for close to an hour. “Thinking.” Tatty flashed me a Time to get out of here look. Since I couldn’t pretend not to have seen it, I ignored it.

“Was Thom Bowles involved with a woman from Puerto Rico?” I pushed on. Four was either nodding off or studying the viscosity of vodka. “The woman from Puerto Rico?” I said a little louder.

“Right. Worked for Whitey.”

“Thom’s father,” Preshie explained. “William. Everyone called him Whitey.”

“Girl was a secretary. Bookkeeper. Something.” Still gripping his freezer mug, he raised it high above his head. Then he put his left forearm across his belly and attempted to snap his fingers in what I guessed was a flamenco gesture. “Cha-cha-cha.”

“Do you remember her name, D?” Tatty inquired. He moved his head once to the left, once to the right: No.

“So Thom got involved with this woman,” I prompted as he took a long slurp. Finally his head went up, then down: Yes. “Did he get her pregnant, Mr. Damaris?”

“Worse.”

“Worse?”

“Wanted to marry her, for heaven’s sake!” “Did he?” Tatty and I demanded together. “Wanted to,” Four repeated. “Don’t worry. Whitey took care of that.”

I hated leaving Tatty with M and D. But she had, after all, responded “Over my dead body” when, a month earlier, I’d asked if she wanted to go to an all-Mahler concert. Not that hearing Das Lied von der Erde was my idea of a fun night either. But John loved Mahler. Just four weeks earlier, before we’d somehow fallen from mutual enjoyment to unspoken dissatisfaction, I’d been positive he’d ask me to go. So positive that I bought two tickets. That way, when he did ask, I could say, John, you’re kidding! I already have two tickets! thus exhibiting my exquisite taste, a necessity after I’d laughed uproariously when he’d inquired a few months earlier, “Wouldn’t it be great to get to hear the Tuaregs from Mali play instruments they made from tools?” and then saw from his expression he hadn’t been joking. Obviously, there were no limits to his enthusiasm for music.

But the Mahler offer never came, and John got lost in his research on Garth Brooks for Biography. So stuck with two tickets, I’d asked Gloria Howard, the senior editor of In Depth who was in charge of Europe. In the six years we’d been on the magazine together, I’d discovered she loved every art form I loathed. Thus, I was certain she’d be thrilled with the invitation, just as I would have bet a week’s salary that she adored the novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Alas, going to a New England boarding school had not classed up my intellect. I’d been immune to Harvard’s transmuting power, which had been known to turn even dumbo jocks into contemplative souls. J-school, of course, did nothing to improve my taste. Being a journalist did not require aesthetic sensitivity. To ace any class, all I needed to do was demonstrate I could write a simple declarative sentence and also appear enraptured by any discussion of ethics.

Since P.S. 97, I’d understood mine was not a sensitive, artistic nature. My gift was being able to give back to my teachers what they wanted—and then some. A thirst for knowledge, an incurable bookworm, the Extra Credit Kid. The neighborhood being a little iffy, plus Grandma Lil not liking what she referred to as “the element,” i.e., my friends, she never let me out after six o’clock. Thus, given the choice of watching Falcon Crest with her at the kitchen table as her stupnagel exegesis of the Channings’ and the Giobertis’ relatives drowned out the dialogue, or being alone in the bedroom reading the Narrative of Sojourner Truth, I opted for scholarship.

Sure, I was also smart. And yeah, I could express myself. But the finer things in my life were never esoteric or abstract. I wanted Born on the Fourth of July and A Fish Called Wanda, not revivals of nouvelle vague films. As my taste developed, I learned to love some accessible art: the Impressionists, Puccini operas. But I couldn’t change my preference for American-style stickin-the-knife-and-twist-it politics to the stuff of Foreign Affairs. I recalled reading Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life during my last year of Ivey, and being unable to decide which side to root for.

But all along, the people I most admired embraced enthusiasms I not only didn’t share, but couldn’t comprehend. Joan Murdoch, the social worker, took me to the circus every year. I pretended to love the clowns, but thought them unreservedly unfunny; I couldn’t understand this sensible woman’s almost childlike delight in them. At Ivey, I didn’t get what there was about the band Devo that made the hippest, smartest kids love it so. Or Philip Glass while at Harvard. I’d heard enough Mahler, read enough Donald Barthelme, seen enough Peter Greenaway films, and inspected enough Matthew Barney art to understand that a certain understanding was missing in me.

John was more high-culture than I for the simple reason that he was interested in almost everything. He really didn’t need a remote. He could quite happily watch MTV, aerobatics, The Grand Illusion, or a performance of one of Schönberg’s twelve-tone lovelies.

Somehow, while Grandma Lil was coaching me on how to eat asparagus, I’d missed Elementary Highbrow. Not that I was a total music lowbrow. I really liked Haydn and Mozart. But me going to hear Mahler was like a Cro-Magnon hanging out with a bunch of Homo sapiens hearing 12 X 5. Sure, I could observe other listeners exhibiting signs not just of comprehension, but of pleasure. Except I couldn’t get no satisfaction.

So there I sat, praying for release from recital-hall hell. Forget Eliot’s “Hell is oneself” and Sartre’s “L’Enfer blah-blah-blah.” Genuine hell was sitting in an overheated auditorium listening to the infinitely irritating, eternally long sixth movement of Das Lied von der Erde knowing I had done this to myself and, moreover, that John now would never think, Hey, I was wrong. There’s no limit to Amy’s openness to culture.

Gloria Howard, naturally, was leaning forward in her seat. Maybe she wanted to be the first to leap up and yell Bravo! though, more likely, she was being drawn to the orchestra by her passion for Mahler. Her profile looked beautiful, transformed by the music. Normally she wasn’t even pretty, and with her new haircut and dark brown skin, she looked amazingly like Spike Lee minus facial hair. Of course, Spike Lee probably wouldn’t be sitting in Rose Recital Hall in a navy dress with white cuffs and collar. Gloria put herself together in the way her mother’s or grandmother’s generation would have called ladylike. She always appeared perfectly groomed, feminine, and asexual in the manner of women who run for high office.

I longed to be as ambitious as Gloria. What she was going for was the executive editorship of In Depth. Now, at thirty-three, she probably planned to occupy it within two years. Besides being extremely smart (or possibly brilliant) and speaking six languages, Gloria was unique at In Depth. She did not posture. Nor did she lie. She did not fib, dissemble, or even pretend. Ever. If she hated Mahler, she would have told her boyfriend, I hate Mahler. Find someone else to go with.

At work, Happy Bob, the current executive editor, called Gloria “my conscience” and “my bullshit detector.” Like a shark, there was something about Happy that let you know the perpetual smile he wore wasn’t a sign of geniality. Still, one of the rare times he seemed in genuinely good spirits was at editorial meetings, when Gloria would respond “Not much” to his “What do you think of that?” His chest would puff with pride as she’d cogently explain why some particular idea of his sucked. It never occurred to him to view her directness as an attack. Too bad for him. Had he asked her, Do you want to make me appear impulsive and unimaginative so you can get my job fifteen years before I plan to retire? she would have answered, Yes.

Finally, Das Lied was over. After too many curtain calls for the tenor and the soprano (a bratwurst in basic black) and bows for the conductor and orchestra, the lights went up. “What did you think?” I asked Gloria before she could ask me.

“There are no words.” Her sigh was contented.

“Gloria, there are always words.” We moved along the aisle to get out for intermission.

“No, there are not always words. However, since you wouldn’t let me pay for the tickets, I’ll give you words: ‘incredibly moving.’ It’s clearly Mahler’s most personal piece.”

“Oh, definitely,” I said. The crowd at the bar was pretty thick, but I was desperate for a Coke. A sugar high (if not general anesthesia) might get me through the rest of the program. Gloria kept me company while I waited on line. With her intelligent face and white-cuffed air of authority, she made me feel as if I were back at the circus with Joan Murdoch: grateful that superior people liked my company. But I was still smelling elephant shit while the uptown set was having a cultural experience. I looked into Gloria’s satiny brown eyes. People talk about eyes sparkling, but that’s usually more about vivacity than actual sheen. Hers were truly glistening—moist with feeling, reflecting the foyer’s subdued illumination as tiny stars.

For an instant, I thought about scotch instead of Coke, but the two glasses of wine I’d had at the Damarises were enough for me. I didn’t want to risk getting so plastered that I’d start making hostile retching noises during the second half of the program, thus forfeiting the not-quite-close friendship I had with Gloria. “What are you working on?” she asked.

“Thomas Bowles’s campaign. I spent part of last week on the bus,” I told her.

“I’m curious. Does he remind you a little bit of Adlai Stevenson?” Gloria inquired.

“Well, he’s not bald. And no one ever accused him of a dry wit.”

“He seems to take himself very seriously.”

“He’s not quite a heavy piece of furniture. He has a little humor, but you’re right. He views every criticism as an attack. As far as your Stevenson comparison goes? He does believe in containment rather than preemption. But of course these days, that position will lead him to the same kind of landslide Stevenson got. Right now, Bowles is splitting the anti-war, anti-IMF/World Bank, pro-environment, uh, anti–death penalty, vegan blocs with Dean. Which only leaves both of them about a hundred million votes in the hole.”

“You don’t like Bowles,” she stated.

“No. Not as a candidate and not as a human being. He’s as close to an intellectual heavyweight as you can find in a presidential campaign, but I think a good president needs a balance of style and substance. Bowles is ninety percent substance. And lately, after the first few minutes of pleasantries and even humor, he’s been getting ponderous, just as people were warming up to him. In South Carolina—in Columbia, where the university is—there was a decent crowd. Young, enthusiastic. So he spoke for forty minutes on how the Republicans are out to rescind the entire New Deal by bankrupting government. By the end of his talk there were three political science majors who were actually listening. If he were president and there was any kind of a crisis, he’d think about it a great deal and maybe handle it correctly. But he couldn’t lead or inspire confidence.” Gloria nodded her agreement. If I knew as much about her turf as she knew about mine, I could be Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. “Listen, Glo, you heard about that kid who crashed Bowles’s fundraiser last week?”

“Amy.”

“What?”

“Don’t waste your time.”

“But what if it is true? Let’s postulate that Bowles’s old man paid off a woman young Thom was involved with and—”

“You’re going to say it goes to the matter of the man’s character.”

“Right. He’s Mr. Anti-War, Mr. Moral Man in an Immoral Society. Look, I’m not saying getting blow jobs in the bathroom of the Oval Office precludes an ability to—” I didn’t finish the sentence because just then I spotted John Orenstein.