About Schmidt - Louis Begley [83]
That man raped you. In New York, one goes to jail for abusing a fourteen-year-old girl!
You’ve got it wrong, Schmidtie. He didn’t rape me and he didn’t abuse me. He was my great love. You’re just jealous.
I’m sorry, said Schmidt. That’s how it struck me. And then what happened?
He was freaking out a lot. I didn’t do stuff with him. At first he wanted me to, but when I said no he never asked again. Then he freaked out real bad. He almost died. They took him away, then they let him out, and they took him away again. He’d go nuts. It was like a routine.
And you kept on seeing him.
At first. It got pretty heavy. Then, when I was a senior, he was away a whole year. He lost his apartment and everything. Sometimes he just wandered around from place to place. There is a kind of little park at Brooklyn College. He’d sit on a bench and wait for me. Shit, Schmidtie, leave me alone. He became a homeless bum! He’d ask me to go with him under the boardwalk at Far Rockaway and I couldn’t because he smelled!
She cried very hard. At first she would push him away each time he tried to stroke her head or arm. Then he remembered he had a bar of chocolate in the refrigerator and got it for her. She ate it like an unhappy little girl and went to sleep holding on to him.
She was the first to wake up, although it was past nine in the morning. They had breakfast. She told Schmidt she wouldn’t go back to Sag Harbor before work; there was nothing she needed to do, and she could go to work as she was. The kitchen was full of sun. He asked her to sit with him in the window seat.
You’re not mad at me? she asked. I mean how I acted like a baby?
You felt terrible, that’s all.
And you still like me? Now that you know about Mr. Wilson? You’re not disgusted? You will want to sleep with me?
It’s not your fault what happened to him. I’ll tell you a secret: I think I am beginning to love you.
And Bryan?
He had forgotten about Bryan; his mind was occupied by the new fact, by the man.
It doesn’t matter, he replied.
XII
A WEEK LATER the telephone rang. Hello, hello, said the vibrant voice. Renata here. Naturally, thought Schmidt, Thursday morning, the day when Dr. R. Riker attends to family business. Too bad Carrie is still here. Perhaps she will sleep through this.
Schmidtie, we’ve got so much to talk about I’ll get right to the point. Will you come into the city and have lunch with me?
Today? answered Schmidt, thinking he’d play dumb.
Yes, if at all possible. It’s the only time I’m free during a weekday. I’m sorry I’m asking at the last minute. I tried to reach you yesterday evening, but you didn’t answer. Won’t you drive in, or take the bus?
Is it really necessary? Couldn’t we talk on the telephone?
You know that’s not the same. Besides, wouldn’t you like to see me?
Not particularly, thought Schmidt, you meddling witch. The audible answer was, Can you doubt it, dear?
He asked her to meet him at his club. As he knew that, in the end, he would pick up the check, it might as well be there or McDonald’s. Club food would do for him, and Dr. Renata had better watch her weight. One might say he was doing her a favor. Besides, he would get to shake the hand of Julio, the Puerto Rican hall porter, whom he missed—come to think of it, perhaps he was one of Carrie’s uncles, the scout presciently dispatched by a tribe ready to invade—and pick up some cigars. Satisfaction with the meanness of these witticisms masked for a moment the sick feeling in Schmidt’s gut, like mint toothpaste after you have been retching.
It was a short moment. Then the thoughts that had been going round and round in his head returned.
Why wouldn’t his daughter deal with him face-to-face? What had he done to her during all those years when he thought he loved her and she loved him? That Charlotte should have been told the vile canard about his reputation for anti-Semitism was unbearable. Believing it was even worse. Who would have put such a lie into circulation? It could only be Jon Riker, closeted with his fiancée. If that was what he had done, he was a blackguard,