About Schmidt - Louis Begley [15]
He looked at the kitchen clock. Charlotte would have left her office, and probably gone to her dance class, would now be at home waiting for the hardworking Riker’s late meeting to end, microwave oven at the ready. What did they put in it? Surely not little steaks; it would have to be grilled tuna—of course, cooked sushi! Instant tortellini! A lot of good it had done, poor Mary’s ban on TV dinners, frozen veal parmigiana with potato croquettes, takeout or delivered pizzas, and those little carton rhomboids of chicken with water chestnuts from the Chinaman on Third Avenue. Linen napkins, the table set as if for a picky grown-up, even if Charlotte was having her dinner alone, as she often did because he, Schmidt, had worked late for many years and Mary had book parties she had to attend—all that effort rewarded by her blooming into an iron-pumping yuppie! Their daughter in Lycra leotards, waiting for her bankruptcy maven to come home! And he—probably accustomed to eating in his shirtsleeves, ballpoint pens and pencils sticking out of his pocket, unbathed and unshaved!
Quiet, Schmidtie. That’s not the way to domestic tranquillity.
Almost surely he could catch her at Jon Riker’s apartment, before he came home; perhaps it was better than talking to her at the office. There, she might put him on hold and attend to more pressing business! On the other hand, he was coming to realize that what he had to say, that he would be delighted to accept the senior Rikers’ invitation to eat their turkey—subtext, meet them and their relatives—could be said anytime, the sooner the better, and quite usefully in fact when Riker was at home, provided he could resist adding a crack or two to the acceptance. Yes, even if he was speaking to Charlotte when she was alone, he’d have to be careful to hold the irony. Then the evident, symmetrical solution presented itself: He could leave the message with Jon’s secretary without speaking to either of them!
He dialed the secretary’s number, got instead her voice mail, and, overcoming an urge to giggle, said. Please tell Mr. Riker that Mr. Schmidt accepts with pleasure the invitation to Thanksgiving lunch so kindly extended by Mr. Riker’s parents.
Now that was done; he could see there was no other way out of the Thanksgiving mess, short of a well-staged last-minute sore throat or bronchitis. A lugubrious solution, but one that needn’t be rejected out of hand. In the meantime, he would call Charlotte at the office and invite her to lunch the first day she was free. It was impossible to face Jon Riker, the Riker parents, and the Riker relatives and friends before he had talked to her. About what? There was time to figure that out, and why not have lunch with his daughter, even if he had nothing new or urgent to say? He might let her talk about her life; she ought to have a great deal to tell him. It seemed to Schmidt that he was behaving intelligently, as though he had sought Mary’s advice and followed it.
Schmidt detested leftovers and cluttered refrigerators. He shopped separately for each meal and bought staples every two weeks at the grocers’ cooperative in the village. Held back by the weather and the weight of his sadness, he hadn’t left the house all day. The only place where he might still get food was the delicatessen with a misleading Russian name that sold cold cuts and shamelessly marked-up