About Schmidt - Louis Begley [31]
Although Schmidt was working on a ship mortgage financing that had to be signed up before the end of the month with only a first-year associate—the firm was unusually busy and, with half the lawyers on vacation, understaffed—he took Mary back to the country that afternoon. There was no point in suggesting that she stay in the city until Friday. She had already told him about Charlotte’s worried little voice on the telephone, the manuscript she had forgotten to put in her overnight bag and left on the hall table, and her suspicion that Mrs. Durban was raiding the liquor closet. And there was no possibility of her returning alone. He had seen the hurt look on her face when he ventured a question: Would she prefer to drive his car from the station, or have him order a taxi to meet her? He took it back at once. Of course, he would take the train with her to Bridgehampton and spend the night. He too wanted to see Charlotte. It was stupid not to have thought right away of the early train. He would catch it, and be in time for the meeting at the bank.
She thanked him and then added: Isn’t this nice for you? You will be able to explain to all your partners and all your friends that you aren’t just overworked. You also have a wife who is sick in the head. They will feel sorry for you.
That piece of nastiness surprised Schmidt. Nothing of the sort had been a part of their discourse; he didn’t know how he had deserved it. Was she off her rocker more seriously than the neurologist had hinted? He decided it was like one of those moments when a searingly bitter bile comes up, unexpected, from one’s stomach into one’s mouth. Depression could mean loss of self-control. What else was there she was hiding?
As soon as it was time for Charlotte to say good night he got Mary to go upstairs as well and, while she was getting ready for bed, made her a cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. When she had finished, he gave her one of the new sedatives. The effect was almost immediate. Mary was lying on her back. Mouth open, she began to snore, as Schmidt’s father used to do, whatever the position or circumstance in which he had happened to fall asleep, and, faithfully, every night while Schmidt had lived at home. Each creak in the floor, each clearing of the throat, could be heard throughout the Grove Street house. In his room, separated from his parents’ by a narrow corridor with a red runner, Schmidt would listen and imagine his mother’s resentful, forever obsequious figure cowering at the edge of the black bed. It was a noise Schmidt had studied. Negligible at first, and almost amusing, like the whirring of a hobbyist’s model airplane or the buzz of a mad fly, one doesn’t mind it because it will end very soon, as soon as the toy engine runs down. Instead, the noise gathers strength, turns fearsomely rowdy and urgent, vastly larger than the placid, self-satisfied body from which it issues, and only a stake driven through the sleeper’s heart will make it stop.
And this was Mary, who forced herself to stay awake in trains and buses, maintaining that one mustn’t sleep in public! He sat down on the bed. Knowing how embarrassed she would be to know