About Schmidt - Louis Begley [9]
He went up the cellar steps and entered the kitchen. Now Riker was at the table, a plate of unfinished poached eggs before him. Steel-rimmed, slightly tinted glasses on his nose, attaché case at his feet, he stopped correcting a thick draft.
Charlotte’s in the shower. Has she told you? She thought I should speak to you first, but I knew you would want it to be her. I hope you approve my making her an honest woman!
He stood up and held out his hand, which Schmidt shook. The long fingers that explored Charlotte were hairy between the first and second joints. Where does the ring go, on the right or left hand? No doubt, Jon would wear a ring. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that this large, very handsome young man’s hairline wasn’t what it used to be. Probably he worried about it; a small pocket mirror might be lurking in one of the pockets of that attaché case.
Nicely put! Thanks for the old-fashioned sentiment. Congratulations!
You are the first to know, Al. I haven’t even told my parents.
Schmidt disliked being called Al, slightly preferring Albert, which was his given name and, therefore, couldn’t be helped. He wondered why Riker wasn’t handling him better. A tiff with Charlotte over breakfast, while the paternal heart was breaking in the cellar? Getting even, because of the bizarre flashback to the days when, as a young associate, he had been afraid of Schmidt? Second thoughts?
Then pick up the telephone. It’s past ten. And don’t use your credit card.
Thanks, Al. I’ll do it from the room. That way I’ll catch Charlotte before she comes downstairs and will get her to speak to them too.
Do that. Since when do you call me Al?
Just testing. I want to see how much a son-in-law can get away with. Don’t be such a sourpuss!
Schmidt took the breakfast dishes off the table, scraped the egg yolk from Riker’s plate, and rinsed them. He genuinely liked cleaning up after meals. From the start, in the early division of chores between him and Mary—it was important to her that Schmidt share equally in the housework and looking after Charlotte—he had asked that doing dishes be included in his assignment. The activity soothed him, as did washing off the kitchen floor and counters and sweeping anyplace at all. They were simple, uncontroversial tasks, in which it was possible, provided there was enough time, to achieve, when one stood back squinting at the clean surfaces, a feeling of perfection, an illusion that order had been reestablished. He referred to them as his occupational therapy.
Of course, during the week there had never been much housework or looking after young Charlotte of the sort that weighed down many of their friends. They had had a cleaning woman from the time they got married, every weekday, since Mary was working at her first junior editorial job and brought manuscripts home, and he kept the usual New York lawyer’s late office hours. When Charlotte arrived so did a nurse, a grim but very gentle fat Texan lady once married to an air force warrant officer, who stayed with them until Charlotte went into the second grade at Brearley—the only southern nanny known to Schmidt who was certifiably white—and a succession of housekeepers, periodically upgraded to keep up with Schmidt’s income. Neither the housekeepers nor the nurse worked on weekends, and the housekeepers prepared dinner