About Schmidt - Louis Begley [4]
The stuff he had written about Riker, with considerable eloquence, in the critiques that, according to office procedures, followed the completion of each important assignment, was true enough: with variations appropriate to the occasion, it was like what he had told Charlotte and Mary and what became, in due course, the necessary mantra of slogans he repeated wearily at firm meetings when Jon came up for partnership. These slogans were not contradicted by Riker’s other attributes, which Schmidt liked less but hadn’t felt compelled to mention because they had little to do with the criteria according to which his partners judged candidates. For instance, the narrowness of that strong intelligence: What did his future son-in-law think about, apart from client matters and deadlines and the ebb and tide of bankruptcy litigation (Jon’s annoying specialty, the domain of loudmouth, overweight, and overdressed lawyers, thank God Jon didn’t look or sound like them), spectator sports, and the financial aspects of existence?
Jon’s talk about finances was sort of a mantra too, one that Jon repeated and Schmidt despised. After his clerkship, should Jon have taken a job with a firm that paid associates more than Wood & King did? How should he evaluate the loss of income resulting from his choice, if there had been one, against the possibly lower probability of partnership at some other more lucrative place—but had he “made partner” there, what a bonanza! Now that he was a Wood & King partner, was his generation’s share of income sufficient (here the pocket calculator might come out of the neatly organized attaché case, Charlotte’s lavish offering), or was too much going to older types (like Schmidt, but that was left unsaid), who had not had the decency to get out when their productivity declined? Should he buy an apartment or continue to rent, was it to be a condo or a co-op, how much would it cost him to be married if Charlotte stopped working, what price tag to put on each child? The evidence of Jon’s having read a book since the first volume of Kissinger’s memoirs, Mary’s Christmas present, was lacking. On long airplane trips, of which Jon took many, Schmidt had noticed that Jon did his “homework”—an honorable enough occupation—caught up on advance sheets, read news magazines, or stared into the middle distance. There was no pocket book tucked into Jon’s litigation bag or in the pocket of his belted raincoat that looked like a Burberry. Such had been Schmidt’s personal observations during the early years of their working together, when they often sat side by side in the plane, Schmidt struggling, once his own “homework” was done, to stay awake over some contraband belles lettres. Discreet interrogation of Jon had revealed only one subsequent change in his traveling habits: as the proud owner of a laptop computer, he could also use the time to write memos to files and work on his checkbook. What was this young man if not a nerd, or in the slang of Schmidt’s own generation, apparently coming back into use, a wonk, a wonk with pectorals? His Charlotte, his brave, wondrous Charlotte, intended to forsake all others and cleave to a wonk, a turkey, a Jew!
Schmidt kicked the last of the stray apples. His anger was like a bad taste in the mouth.
That final indignity was unmentionable. He could not have spoken of it to Mary: a word against the Jews, and she brought all the sins of Hitler on your head, but this marriage was not a matter of civil rights or equal opportunity or, God help him, the gas ovens. To the best of his recollection, no matter how deeply or how far back he looked, Schmidt was sure he had not once in his life