Free Memories of a Marriage by Louis Begley Page A

but all the same the kids left traces that had to be removed. I stayed at the Harvard Club while that was done and the stuff that had gone to storage was brought back. Other than that? I haven’t particularly wanted company, which is just as well, since so few of the people I used to see in New York are still living in the city or indeed are alive and operational. I’ve gone to the movies and once to the ballet. That’s how I ran into Lucy, I added, at the ballet. Then, a couple of days ago, she had me to dinner at her apartment—alone!
    You lucky man, Jane remarked speaking very slowly, that must have been fun, and very enlightening—about Thomas and me! I’m glad you’ve decided to give me equal time.
    Actually, I replied, you got off fairly easily, although she does wish her friends hadn’t abandoned her for you. She did have a good deal to say about poor Thomas.
    What an awful woman! Jane fired back. When you think how she terrorized him! Thomas, who dominated every meeting he went to, who mesmerized heads of great corporations,central bankers, politicians, cabinet ministers, would just want to hide, crawl under the nearest piece of furniture, when she telephoned, and since most of the time it was about Jamie there was no way he could refuse to take the call. You know how her voice carries. I couldn’t help overhearing unless I left the room, and he’d make these desperate signs for me to stay. Now Thomas, she’d say, don’t you understand this and that. Now Thomas, don’t play dumb, you know I’m right, Jamie really needs this or that. No, there is no other way. Or, Do you realize how you are destabilizing him? She’d use this snarky psychobabble on him, as if she’d studied at Freud’s knee instead of wasting untold years and money on the couch of a preposterous Central Park West shrink. Dr. Peters thinks this, Dr. Peters says that, now Thomas, Dr. Peters is concerned about Jamie’s autonomy! It used to make me sick to hear it.
    She did say that Jamie is a failure. It’s really too bad; I remember him as such a nice little boy and then a nice and attractive teenager.
    Don’t let her bad-mouthing turn you against him either. He is still a truly nice man, sweet and gentle, and he’s a failure only if you think every screenwriter is a failure if he doesn’t get an Oscar or write the equivalent of
The Sopranos
! He’s done well at Sundance and in Toronto, and he has something right now in Cannes. He’s making a living, and he likes what he’s doing. Sure, Thomas helped him, and the money he left him has taken the pressure off. What’s wrong with that? What is a father supposed to do with his money? The truth is that he liked what Jamie wrote and understood how stupid it wouldhave been to say, Listen, kid, you should write better or be more commercial, or If you can’t write better and earn more money then at least learn to count and I’ll take you into the firm! Thomas and Jamie had a really good relationship. Jamie trusted him. Some of that has rubbed off on me. He trusts me too. And you know what? I wish he were my son.
    We had ordered our lunch. Jane’s choices amused me: a mixed-green salad followed by a Caesar salad, both without dressing, and a Perrier. So that’s what going out to lunch was about. Small wonder that the owner of my own favorite French restaurant, the last of the breed that could trace its ancestry to the 1939 World’s Fair, had trouble hanging on to his middle-aged clientele, never mind acquiring a young one. I wasn’t going to play Simon Says. So I asked for
pâté de campagne
followed by a hanger steak—rare—and a glass of Côtes du Rhône. I guess she had found my order amusing too and remarked that I hadn’t lost my Parisian habits. That too would be right up Ned’s alley.
    I bet she gave you the Thomas-the-monster routine, she continued, especially if you haven’t seen her since he died. Don’t let her. You knew him too well to buy that sort of crap.
    Jane