Shipwreck Read online

  I thought about her reply then, and later that day, returning to it often while we continued on our strange road together. I knew that many men, myself included before I married Lydia, would go to any length to sleep with every attractive woman they came across. That was so, I believed, because the male desire for women is situated right here—North tapped his fly with his index and median fingers, I guess to make sure I didn’t miss the point—and for them the great existential puzzle comes down to this: Why does the penis sometimes become a club, when it’s neither wanted nor needed to be one, and why, even more perversely, does it so often shrink, hide, and refuse to show itself when, happily, our desire is faced with its very object? I know there are answers to these questions, but we needn’t go into them now, North said, raising his voice. He must have thought I was going to contradict him or add my own two cents’ worth of theory.

  But for women, I believed at the time, North said, desire is less specific. It must be accompanied by fondness for the man, a sense that the conditions for the fulfillment of desire are right; certainly desire cannot be purely carnal because why else would women seem to be quite genuinely attracted to certain repulsive men? You have never seen that happen in the other direction, a man besotted by a female of monstrous ugliness. Bear in mind that I have always avoided books on sexology, gender studies, and the like, from Simone de Beauvoir to Betty Friedan, so that this theory is based on my own field research and observation, in which I have never engaged full-time. The result is quite necessarily that its authority is limited. But I have begun to wonder whether great literature, that highest and most reliable source of learning about human nature, does not contradict the “woman above mere flesh” thesis. Take just two notorious examples: Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary. Can Rodolphe and the other creeps for whom Emma sells her soul be explained by anything other than a raw, irresistible desire to have their phalluses up her vagina? Don’t answer me now. Just think about it. Please. And Vronsky? Why does Anna give up everything for him?

  Meanwhile, North said, I’ll get on with my tale. The day wore on pleasantly. I didn’t even try to avoid inviting the sculptor to lunch. Politeness or my luck? He had to leave before we had coffee, to get back to the gallery. Over cognac— we had already agreed that we were going to take a nap after lunch—Léa returned to the subject of her painting. She would arrange for its shipment, unless I had other ideas. I didn’t. Then she would have it shipped as expeditiously as possible, because it was important for her to regularize the situation, so far as Lydia was concerned, so that all three of us could be friends. You really will be able to invite me to dinner at home once the painting has arrived, she told me. By the way, Jacques Robineau invited me to go with him to New York in July, so I’ll be there. I want to meet Lydia and see your apartment. But I don’t think that we’ll hang the painting in the apartment, I told her, I bought it for my office. You see, I find it magnificent, but Lydia will think it doesn’t go with the other art we have. It takes her a long time to accept new things. Or she will say it’s too large, we would have to move everything around to place it. Another thing: we will be away from the city in July. As you can imagine, I did not think it necessary to express my views about her going to New York with Robineau, and perhaps planning to bring him to visit as well. She answered that if we were in the Hamptons—I had told her that is where we have our country house—we might be together anyway. Jacques had friends there he wanted to visit over the weekend. She named an investment banker. If not, she would be in New York again in September. You will have to find a way to introduce me to Lydia, she said, very distinctly. I know you will manage it.

  And I knew the name of Robineau’s friend in the Hamptons: a Venezuelan of French extraction, a fellow in his late thirties, I thought, who worked for one of the big investment banks on Wall Street, North said. He and his wife were then in possession of a house in East Hampton, on Lily Pond Lane, and moved in pretty fancy circles. Even Lydia’s parents occasionally invited them to their big cocktail parties.

  Lily Pond Lane, I murmured.

  Do you know it? North asked. Then you realize that, as the crow flies over Hook Pond, it isn’t all that distant from the Frank family strongholds on Further Lane. The problem was that we would indeed be there on the Fourth of July weekend— Lydia’s parents are comically serious about national holidays, and I couldn’t see asking her, for no reason at all, to abandon East Hampton on that particular holiday when for years we have spent most of the month of July there. And though we almost never go to cocktail parties in the country—they cut into the working day so Lydia goes to them alone, if at all— there are invitations to Fourth of July shindigs given by old friends one really can’t refuse. It occurred to me that the Venezuelans, with that fellow Jacques and Léa in tow as house-guests, might even turn up at the Franks’ annual bash, or at the McEwens’ or Sartors’, people we have known forever. Of course, I would greet Léa. I would greet Robineau as well. And if Lydia was close by, I would introduce her to them. Nothing could be simpler: the journalist who interviewed me for the article in French Voguethat Lydia had liked—because the issue in which the piece was to appear would be out by then, and Léa would have sent a copy that I, in turn, would have shown to Lydia—and this is her friend, with whom I dined at the Lalondes. And afterward, would Léa find a ruse—or would it be I who found it—to ease out of the crowd, so I could show her the view from the deck above the dune, or even escort her down some battered steps to the beach? It was probable, I thought. She would review the activities the Venezuelans had organized for the weekend and find that she had a free morning: because Jacques and the Venezuelan husband and wife were scheduled to be on the golf course, and she had never taken up the game. In that case, would she propose that we meet at one of the motels on Route 27? That too seemed likely. Whether there would be a vacancy at any of them during that supercharged weekend was another matter altogether. That dodging Léa and keeping her away from Lydia would involve lies and take a good deal of my time were clear enough.

  North stopped speaking, as though to catch his breath. There wasn’t much whiskey left in the bottle. He emptied it into our glasses, pouring carefully so that we each got an equal share, added ice cubes, stirred with his index finger, and ordered another bottle. They will keep it here for us, he said. I don’t expect we will finish it. By the way, North added, it helps that you are a good listener. You make me want to continue.

  Seeing the danger, North said, I decided I must lay down some rules of conduct for Léa so that she would know what I expected—and with regard to discretion, I thought that her touchiness about being seen with me in restaurants, at events like that sculpture show and so forth gave me some ground for hope. I told her she could call me at my office whenever she liked. If I was writing, I wouldn’t answer. But if she left a message, I’d call her back as soon as I could. The fact is that I have a second line which I always pick up, whatever I am doing. It’s for Lydia and my sister, Ellen; the gang that services the bodies that used to belong to our mother and father; and nobody else. Naturally, I did not reveal its existence to Léa. But I will write to you, she told me. I replied that she could send letters to my office address, but she wasn’t to expect any from me. I told her the truth: writing letters takes time and effort I can’t spare. Not even for business letters. My agent or my accountant takes care of them. I discourage people from writing personal letters to me. Of course, I don’t always succeed.

  She thought this over and said she understood. You want to be able to fuck me when you feel like it and have a spare moment and don’t think that Lydia will catch you. The rest of the time, I am not to get in your way.

  I laughed and told her that was a harsh way to describe the good time we were having. She agreed that we were having a nice time. Then let’s not spoil it, was my reply. For the record, though, I reminded her that in my solar system Lydia was the sun, and everything revolved around her. I will never forgive myself, I said, if Lydia comes to be hurt b
y what we are doing. If it is your fault, if it is because you have talked, I believe I will kill you.

  I suppose I looked quite fierce—that was certainly my intention—because after a moment of silence she said: I think you would. We should stop what we are doing right now. And she burst into tears.

  Of course we didn’t stop. Neither of us wanted to. We took our nap after lunch, which means that first we fucked and then we slept; she went home to change, and we had dinner together; she spent the night and most of the following day with me until it was time for her to go to a family meal with her brothers and parents—the parents turned out to live in one of those splendid buildings on the quai Anatole France overlooking the Seine, the Tuileries, and the place de la Concorde. This was consistent with the widely held theory that bourgeois families of the Seventh Arrondissement are more likely than any others to send sons to the Polytechnique and the École des Mines, the latter being the finishing school for the most brilliant of polytechniciens.I noticed that she did not suggest that I meet the parents and brothers and perhaps stay for dinner. This I took to be another show of reserve and discretion and a good omen. Perhaps we could keep our lives separate except when we were conjoined in bed. She called me after her dinner as she was leaving quai Anatole France. I met her halfway, at the corner of the rue de Rivoli and the rue St. Florentin. We walked back to the hotel together, and soon we were so conjoined.

  The next morning we said goodbye at the hotel before I left for the airport. She cried at first and then suddenly cheered up, saying it was silly to get into such a state. We had been happy and would be together again very soon. Somehow I would make it happen. It’s paradoxical, considering how I feared hurting Lydia, I too believed I would bring that about. What I have already described to you, the transformation of sexual appetite into tenderness, had continued. If I did not exactly love Léa, I am certain that I felt for her something virtually indistinguishable from love, the distinction being only the one inexorably imposed by my marriage. It was out of the question that I should ever leave Lydia; there was no one with whom I had a more perfect understanding. All of this sounds very banal, but I assure you that it was or anyway seemed very real. And Léa? Perhaps she was a nymphomaniac, if those mythical creatures really exist. But where was the evil in what she was doing? For the moment, I could not find it; on the contrary it seemed to me that love of one’s own body and of the body of another—which was after all the essence of her exploits—was good; not evil. For the same reason, it seemed to me that what she and I did could not be condemned en bloc, unless I failed to protect Lydia from hurt and humiliation. I should tell you that even then, in the moment of my greatest exaltation with Léa, I was not under any illusions about Lydia’s accepting the fact that I had a mistress in Paris and allowing me to have concurrently two happy and sexually exciting lives. Not only was I convinced that Lydia would tell me to pack my bags at the merest hint of such a thing, but I realized that her acceptance of any such arrangement, which was inconceivable, would be repugnant to me. It would end our marriage as we had understood it. Wouldn’t you, if I ever let you get a word in edgewise, ask what was that understanding? Why, that we were united and trusted each other in all circumstances. Nothing spoken or unspoken should separate us. Now I can see you beginning to rise from your comfortable armchair, waving your arms as though to chase a wasp—careful, don’t spill your whiskey on your shirtfront—because you don’t see how I could possibly reconcile this high-minded notion of marriage with the position that adultery is wrong only if it is discovered. Base hypocrisy? Yes. But I thought that was the way to do the least harm.

  You will recall perhaps that Lydia had offered to spend the weekend following my return from Paris at our house on Martha’s Vineyard, North said. That is what we did. How she fought off the senior Franks and her siblings to disengage us from their plans for East Hampton, I will never know. She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. But I felt grateful and happy like a little boy who gets his dearest wish.

  The house on Further Lane in East Hampton that Bunny and Judy gave to Lydia as our wedding present is quite wonderful. By the way, why the Franks didn’t have the street renamed Frank Lane or Frank Keep, since they all have houses on it, is one of those mysteries of tycoon lore—but never mind that for now. Imagine a deceptively simple, single-story wooden house with a great many rooms, built in the fifties by a sensible architect of no renown who understood that a beach house must be all light and air. Wild roses guard its approaches. But like all Frank houses, it sits well behind the dune, so that the winds do not kill the real garden on the side that faces away from the ocean, of which you have an unobstructed view from our terrace. There is no better view and no better beach in the world except one, on Martha’s Vineyard, that I will tell you about later. In a way, the house I own on the Vineyard is the perfect opposite of the house in Further Lane. The Vineyard house lies hidden in the Chilmark woods, and the only view is on the garden, beautifully laid out but under my care allowed to become too lush. Overgrown. I inherited the house from a bachelor uncle, who designed it and planted the garden; he left his money—not a great sum—to Ellen and me, but bequeathed to me alone the house and his boat. When I was a boy, I spent several weeks with him each summer, sailing and swimming and cooking. He was a great chef as well as a sailor and believed that meals should be as good at sea as at home, although the menu might be different. The house has become valuable because of acreage that goes with it, but it wasn’t very valuable then; the boat, which probably meant even more to me than the house, fortunately was not valuable at all. You don’t get many people willing to pay anything near replacement value for an absurdly narrow forty-foot wooden sloop, even one of such exquisite beauty. Or one so well equipped: my uncle had installed every gadget ever designed to make it possible for one man to sail her quite comfortably. I didn’t think it was fair to divide the money with Ellen and keep the house for myself, even if that was what my uncle intended, and owning a share in the house was of no interest to her, so I gave up in her favor the money that was to come to me under Uncle’s will and threw in some more besides so that we came out exactly even based on what the property was worth at the time. That was a great extravagance, especially considering that Ellen and I have yet to inherit what little may be left by the devouring nurses when both my parents are dead, and that I already realized that Lydia and I wouldn’t make much use of the house or the boat, the house in East Hampton being so much nearer the city and easier to get to. It was a still greater extravagance if you add the upkeep of the boat. Uncle named her Cassandra, after his favorite character in Homer. As it turned out, even after the payment to Ellen, the house is the best investment I ever made because prices on the Vineyard have gone sky-high ever since it became chic. In fact, if I took into account how much I could get for the land alone if I subdivided, I could begin to think of myself as a rich man, but the land will not be touched so long as I can prevent it. Anyway, marriage to Lydia made hash of my thoughts about money. I still count pennies, but only out of old habit. She doesn’t need my money. It doesn’t matter to her how much or how little I earn by writing, how much it costs to maintain the temple to Dr. Alzheimer in Washington, and what if anything will remain for Ellen and me. How much there will be in my estate doesn’t interest her. She doesn’t count pennies, but she is not a spendthrift either. She is quite simply as sensible about money as about everything else. But to give the devil his due, it helps in these matters to be part of the impregnable and unbeatable Frank consortium.

  Are you on the lookout for the monster of envy as I talk? Yes? Then you must have seen him at the entrance of the lair, his ugly ears perking up. Mentioning the Franks will do it every time. Sometimes, to fool my conscience, I say that it’s their own goddamn fault: always treating me like an outsider, while the spouses of Lydia’s siblings and their children stand within the magic circle. Perhaps it would have been different if Lydia and I had had children. Their having given the house on Further Lane
to her only, and not to us as a couple, that’s what got me really started on the exclusionary theory in the first place. Curiously enough, that transaction or its resonance may have made me choose the wrong way at the fork in the road when Lydia and I had our first discussions about having children. Her saying to me—in complete good faith, and very nicely too—that she would bring up our child alone if I didn’t think I could help, on a base and shameful level had on me the effect of a provocation. Ho, ho! I said to myself. I’m not needed. No Frank grandchild needs anyone except other Franks! Well, if that is so, who am I to complain? By all means, let Lydia do it. That was a great pity. Although my repeated lectures about the needs of a writer and his limitations as a parent were given in good faith, and expressed honestly held beliefs, they didn’t need to be my last word on the subject. Children are seductive; I might have succumbed to their charm. But the monster made me dig in my heels and resist. A writer doesn’t always choose what is best for him as a writer, or if he does, his actions aren’t always consistent with that choice, and that may not be a bad thing. Besides, who is to say that childlessness, or indifference toward children if he has them, is good for a writer? Does it not cut him off from life itself? The issue can be debated. I have gone around for years, quoting, as an excuse for the messes I have made, Yeats’s lines about the intellect of man: how it “is forced to choose Perfection of the life, or of the work, And if it take the second must refuse / A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.” Alas, it’s true that, except in my writing, I have never taken the time or made the effort to do my best, let alone seek perfection. I don’t believe that will ever change. But, in fact, I have never fooled myself; I have always known very well that it was one thing for Yeats to choose his work over his life—not that he was absolutist in his choice either; he was too smart for that—and quite another for your humble servant. As you know by now, I am by no means convinced that my work has been built to outlast bronze.