About Schmidt - Louis Begley [23]
Why hadn’t he?
Some seagulls flew overhead, in full cry. Such a very clear day! Already, he could see the house at the edge of Georgica. Too bad only he was taking advantage of the sunshine to walk on the beach, but what could one expect? The locals were busy unplugging toilets or filling oil tanks and sending bills for the same, writers were writing or getting a cup of coffee at the candy store, the Weird Sisters were on the telephone, retirees with apartments in New York or Paris were in those apartments getting dressed for lunch, and the other old farts had lost the ability to move or the habit. They might be playing canasta at the Seagull Motel! Mary had liked walking on this endless beach even more than he. A place of no abiding footprints: Why hadn’t the ocean saved him from trudging here alone, his thoughts dispersed and black? Had he lost his nerve? That might be the truth, disguised as pity for his own body, still undamaged, still eager, like a dog that won’t come to heel, eager to gallop about, a soggy tennis ball in his teeth, so unprepared for the rolling and scraping against the ocean floor, for the swelling and the evisceration. Pace Woody Allen, it was possible to be less brutal. There were pills: all those leftover pills in paper cups. It turned out that Mary didn’t need everything the surgeon had provided. He had told himself he should bury her, that it was wrong—cruel, really—to leave it to Charlotte to clean up after both mother and father, to muck out their private, unspeakable debris. But it hadn’t taken long before he recognized the true shape of his disgrace: curiosity, and longing for solitude, both obscene as an itch. For so many years, in effect, his entire adult life, he had lived at Mary’s side. Could he not sail alone beyond the pillars of Hercules and taste the apples of the western garden before the waves closed over his head?
He had never promised Mary he would do it, although the temptation had been great. Solicitude—she was so tired—had held him back, and his own dislike of pathos. Such little courage as she still had shouldn’t be used up in vacuous remonstrances: No, you mustn’t, you are still a young man, think of Charlotte! Yes, I must, I won’t live without you! Yet, until the end, he had intended to do it, at the right time, without making it harder for her.
Hee! The ocean is still wet, the painkillers are nice and dry!
The Polacks would be at his house for one hour more. That was the message Schmidt read on the face of his watch. A meal in their presence was unthinkable. Comments on his nutrition. Or Mrs. Subicki, her rear end cascading off the seat of the kitchen chair drawn up companionably beside him, legs in elastic kneesocks stretched out, monstrous feet unshod for comfort, would reach into the Gap shopping bag for a bologna and mayonnaise on white, already half consumed on the previous job, and finish it pensively. The hard-boiled eggs and sardines could wait—for his supper or the next day’s lunch.
It wasn’t the Sisters who harpooned Schmidt. He hadn’t even noticed whether they were at their usual place at O’Henry’s. Sure of himself and nimble, Schmidt had evaded the owner’s greeting and was moseying toward a table in the land of charity, near the one at which he had sat the previous evening—itself occupied by two males of the minor insurance agent genus—it being equally out of the question, Schmidt thought, to sit elsewhere, and let the sweet child fear she had been wrong to be so friendly with him or that she hadn’t been friendly enough when she said thank you for that tip, and to say point-blank to the busybody owner that he wanted to be served by Carrie. Instead, he heard the familiar, droll voice of his college roommate. A pleasantly stocky