The Heights Part 4

"He was a fantastic history teacher-"

I started to protest.

"You're modest. He's modest. He was the premier history teacher at the Montague Academy for the last umpteen years!"

"What does he do now?"

"He's a stay-at-home dad."

"I wish I'd have done that."

"Done what?"

"What he's doing."

"What, who?"

"This fine young man to my right . . ."

"Tim-I'm Tim Welch."

"And do you know what he's doing? He's being a dad."

"And finishing his dissertation," Kate added.

"So he stays home with the kids?"

Kate, pa.s.sing a plate of asparagus: "Yes, when they're not at preschool . . ."

"More beef! Here's the well-done!"

"How great that you can do that, that you can afford to do that."

"Well," I said, "you'd do it, too, if your wife got a job with Bruno Schwine."

A pause. No one seemed to recognize the name Bruno Schwine.

"Bruno who?"

I'd started to explain Kate's new job when she interrupted, "We work for Cortez."

For one man down on the other end, the mere mention of Cortez was a conversation stopper.

"That Cortez stock is astonishing, at a time when few stocks are. Philip tipped me off, said it was going to be big . . ."

"And was he right?"

"In the last six months, the stock has split maybe four times. Earnings are up seventy-eight percent last quarter, so yes, Philip was right. But that's no surprise."

"I hope they're giving you stock options."

Kate smiled. (They weren't.) "What company are you talking about?"

"Cortez. They have their finger in every pie. But they made their first money in biotech. Genetically enhanced crops. Super hybrids. This corn, for instance, undoubtedly is an example of what Cortez does best."

"G.o.d, this corn is beautiful, the most perfect-looking ears . . ."

"Funny," I said, "I find it has no taste."

"Corn this beautiful doesn't have to taste good!"

"Okay, I've got a pen finally, I've got a piece of paper-say the name of that company again."

Many in the room, in near unison: "Cortez!"

"I've never heard of it before."

"You will," I said, looking at Kate, who sighed, half smiling, half already home.

"Not everyone is as sold on Cortez as you are, Nathan."

"They're just jealous they didn't buy in. Philip says it's just the tip-"

"Who is this Philip? You keep talking about Philip. We all want to know Philip."

"Philip Ashworth."

"I haven't heard of him."

"And only because he wants it that way. I mean, take Donald Trump. He parades around with his ninth wife, combs his sad hair in that nasty, nasty way-he's all hype. But Philip Ashworth is the polar opposite of Donald Trump. He's discreet, humble. He glides under the radar. While others, including The Donald, inflate their worth, Philip Ashworth downplays his."

"Then why did he buy that house?"

"What house?"

"Not a house-it's the house on the Promenade."

"Oh, well, I heard he bought it for her."

"Wait a minute. Philip Ashworth bought a house around here?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"He's moving into the neighborhood?"

"Yes, he is."

"That house, have you been in it, oh my G.o.d, that is the house!"

"And now he'll be our neighbor."

"I heard it's his wife who made him buy here . . ."

"Oh, her. Everybody's talking about her."

Kate perked up. "What do they say?"

"Well, for starters, she's unapproachable. Cold. And she clearly has no problem spending his money."

"I've heard she's impossible to please. Architects come and go, she fired the designer Tad Keith, she was rude to someone, I can't remember who . . ."

"She sounds like a piece of work."

"Yes, a piece of work who's had a lot of work done. People just don't naturally look that good."

"I heard Amber Goodsleeve say that Rebecca Plant had heard . . ."

"Well, I heard . . ."

Somewhere around the tenth I heard, Kate began to laugh. And some laugh it was. Harder than I could ever remember. Laughed so hard she nearly slipped out of her chair. Laughed so hard tears sprang from her eyes as she covered her bright red face with her available hand. Laughed so hard I was afraid she'd pee her pants.

The conversation stopped as the others watched. Our hostess: "What's so funny?"

"All of you," Kate said, wiping her eyes. "You haven't met the woman, you don't even know her name. None of what you say about her is true!"

"How do you know?"

"Because," Kate said, standing to leave, "she's my best friend."

KATE.

NOT LONG AGO TIM EMERGED FROM OUR TINY BATHROOM WITH A LOOK OF ABJECT horror on his face. When I asked him what was wrong, he refused to explain. "Tim, please," I begged. "No," he whispered as he wiped the tears from his eyes. I moved close to hold him, and he confessed. He'd farted in the bathroom, and devastatingly, the smell was unlike that of any fart he'd ever let fly before. The smell, he claimed, had "a certain middle-aged texture, a tangy thickness, a queer persistence." Surely he wasn't serious. Then he explained how this particular fart was identical in smell to those of his father. Hence the tears. I laughed, because how absurd, right? But the smell for Tim evidenced what he feared most. No amount of good intentions, no wishing it were otherwise, can prevent the inevitable slow drip of our parents back into us. We repeat their sayings, we yield to their petty theories, we perpetuate their quirks and facial tics and even their fart smells. It can't be stopped. Muted at times, perhaps. Redirected, maybe. But they win, parents do, in ways we haven't even yet imagined.

Tim and his fatherlike fart came to me as we climbed the stairs to our apartment after our hasty departure from the Wellfleets' dinner party. For as much as my life has been a direct retaliation to my mother and her wild ways, my behavior moments earlier had reminded me how I hadn't shaken her motherly imprint. Whenever I exaggerate, I am most like her. Best friend? Why did I have to reach so far? Couldn't I have said, "Well, that hasn't been my experience. I rather like Anna Brody." The truth was, other than one meeting on a snowy day and a brief phone call last spring, I didn't know her. The truth was, I wanted to know her. I was dying to know her. But for all I knew, everything those party guests had been saying could very well be true. Maybe they were being kind!

At home, Tim apologized to Pearl, our babysitter, for our early return. He paid her for the hours she'd been promised, walked her to Clinton Street to hail a taxi, and then came home and found me already in bed, under the covers, wide awake, agitated.

"Look," Tim said, sitting on the bed and pulling off his socks. "Forget the Wellfleets-we swim in different waters."

Funny, I hadn't even been thinking of them. And of course, they'd been insulted. Our abrupt exit had been rude, at the very least. Now the Wellfleets were added to my worries. It was safe to a.s.sume that in the weeks ahead, I'd see them frequently, and it would be awkward-from now on; forever, probably. But what worried me more, and what I started to tell Tim, was that I had greatly exaggerated my relationship with Anna Brody. He would have none of it, stating how proud he was of me for defending my friend.

"But you don't understand-the words best friend were completely ludicrous."

"Nothing else would have stopped them-"

"But to say best-"

"Okay, so maybe you were premature."

"What do you mean, premature?"

"So she's not your best friend now, but maybe one day up ahead she will be. And as Bruno likes to say, Kate, you have an innate capacity to envision the future."

Then he kissed me, rolled over, and fell fast asleep.

How I envied the ease with which he did it. I was far from sleeping. The next day was to be my first day of work, and I felt nervous, with a tight knot in my stomach, and was plagued by a faint inner voice that said, Well, this is going to change everything.

Unable to sleep, I got up and checked the radio for the weather forecast, laid out my clothes, then ran a bath and used the boys' Mr. Bubble. I even used their baby shampoo. If I smelled like them, then maybe they wouldn't feel so far away. As my hair dried, I paced the apartment, finally sitting down at the kitchen table, where I wrote a note for the boys in crayon, explaining my whereabouts and how they were to have fun with Daddy and that I would be home soon, taking the fastest train I could.

The offices for Bruno Schwine and a.s.sociates were in Manhattan, on the ground floor of a pre-Civil War brownstone on Eleventh Street, just west of Fifth Avenue. Recently, Bruno had evicted a few therapists who had been renting office s.p.a.ce for years. Bruno had lived upstairs since 1974. He'd bought the brownstone for one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars: as he liked to say, "A fortune at the time." Now it was worth millions.

I buzzed. While waiting, I looked through the wrought-iron grille-work of the downstairs windows. The front room was packed full with stacks of boxes and random pieces of furniture still wrapped in plastic. It became quite clear that my first days-weeks, even-would be spent more as office manager. Phones would need to be installed, walls painted, office supplies purchased, the works. There was much to do, and I had overdressed.

Bruno came out the parlor floor door and stood on the stoop, holding a cup of tea. Dressed in jeans and a cotton dress shirt but still wearing slippers, Bruno looked rested, with a dark tan, his salt-and-pepper hair dyed a deep reddish-brown. He'd gained back at least half the weight he'd lost. He looked terrific, and I told him so right away, and he said, "Well, I feel terrific."

"So," I said, smiling back, "then it's a good day to begin."

The summer had been rough for Bruno, another round of chemotherapy and radiation that had resulted in his being hospitalized at St. Vincent's in early July. I was stunned at this news, but he laughed it off, saying he hadn't bothered me because he'd wanted my summer to be "interruption-free." I learned all this (and more) during the breakfast that turned into lunch that we shared on my official first day. Bruno did most of the talking, repeating some of what we both knew. A generous allowance had been provided for office s.p.a.ce, travel (when necessary), staff (me), all with the singular goal of helping Louis Underfer's private charity, the Lucy Foundation, award grants to needy organizations.

I knew only what Google and Wikipedia knew about Cortez. Based in St. Louis, Cortez was the brainchild of chairman/CEO Louis Underfer, a former high school biology teacher, who started Cortez in an effort to make money after his first child, his only child, Lucy, was diagnosed with an extreme form of autism. It may be apocryphal, but Louis Underfer worked in his garage/laboratory and, over many months of late nights, developed a rare everything-resistant hybrid for seed corn. One thing led to other things, none of which I bothered to remember, only this: Louis Underfer and his wife, Sheila, had lived in the same house in a nondescript St. Louis suburb for the last thirty-five years. Apparently, any move from their modest split-level on their typical suburban street would irrevocably disrupt their daughter's sense of place. She would come undone. It would be devastating. So here was a man, admittedly one of the most successful in our time, who could afford any home imaginable, who couldn't ever move, who wouldn't ever even think of moving, all because of his great love for his daughter. In a word, he was decent. And yet the Cortez Corporation was anything but.

Bruno laid out my schedule for the next few weeks. My mornings would be spent getting our office up and running. Afternoons would be for reading and research.

Bruno didn't know how much money we would have to give away; he said he'd be going to St. Louis soon and would have a better idea then. "In the meantime, Kate," he said, "think of this as jazz."

"How so?"

"We're making it up as we go along."

The best part of that first day was going home.

What a mess. Our apartment looked as if a series of bombs had been detonated. I could hear Tim in the kitchen, wearily insisting that Sam eat a carrot: "At least try it," he said. I called out faintly at first, then louder until they heard me: "I'm back." This was followed by a sudden silence, then the boys appeared at the end of our narrow hall, racing toward me, arms outstretched. I squatted down to catch them.

That night Tim, Teddy, and Sam presented me with a gift that had been wrapped in newspaper. The boys helped tear off the paper. It was a large blank journal with Monet's water lilies on the cover. I tried to be gracious, but I didn't want a gift. I wanted to be the one giving. Tim urged me to open the journal. I did and saw that he'd written an entry. I promised to read it later.

September 6th 8:32 A.M.-Kate kissed both boys good-bye. And left for work. Boys called out from window. She turned and waved. She wore a dark blue pantsuit, a cream-colored blouse, her new comfortable shoes. Before she left, Teddy said, "Mommy, why are you so pretty?"

8:45 (approx.)-Kate called from subway platform to see if we were okay. And we were! Teddy was helping with dishes while Sam had curled up on the kitchen floor, wrapped himself in his blanket, thumb stuck in his mouth.

9:00ish to 9:28 exactly-art project. Made Welcome home, Mommy sign for front door and Congrats on first day of work card. Teddy did a good job printing his name.

9:30 to 11:00-errands, stopped at m.u.f.fins and More, where each boy picked out his favorite m.u.f.fin/bagel/treat. While we were out on errands, Mommy left two messages. The first to check in, the second to tell Teddy and Sam a secret. She asked me to leave the bedroom, which I did, but kept my ear to the door so I could hear. She'd hidden a bag of jelly beans for them under . . .

The entry continued in that vein for two-plus pages. Where and how Tim had found the time to write it, I do not know. But it was a kind gesture, and I knew what he was trying to do. It was his way of making it seem I wasn't missing anything.

Later, after the front door had been double-locked and the lights turned out, Tim, almost asleep, said, "Oh, I forgot. Someone called for you."

"Who?"