Baby of the Family Read online

  When Mr. Kamal had finished his tea and cookies, he put his two palms on the tops of his thighs and stood. Shelley got to her feet as well. She figured they were headed to the office, where she would dictate his words for him, the writing portion of the job. This she was looking forward to: she would discover what was going on in his head, what his bizarre questions were really getting at.

  “No,” he answered, as if he knew she was opening her mouth. “You will leave now. You have not done well enough.”

  She shook her head ferociously. Hot pressure welled behind her temples. Who the hell was this guy? He had no idea who she was. He had no idea about anything at all. While she trembled with repugnance, Mr. Kamal managed to take two large steps that placed his body flush against hers: the oval cylinder of his torso lined up beside the vaselike cylinder of hers. The heat of someone else’s body was enticing. Then he gripped her bicep with his two hands, as if to drag her down.

  His voice lowered. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

  “No.” She didn’t step back. She didn’t move. His question was bizarre and slightly repulsive. And yet she felt a bit honored that he was even asking about her.

  “Very well.” He cleared his throat. “You are still not precise enough, but I will give you another shot. You will come back tomorrow. We will read the paper, nothing more serious.”

  * * *

  —

  It was still midafternoon when Shelley returned to her apartment, a buzz running through each limb. The man could not be normal, but she did feel noticed by him; he cared enough to question. And really, what else did she have to do? Upon entering the front door, she stood in the kitchen and sneezed. The Kamal household emanated musky perfume, wool, and Pine-Sol. Her own apartment carried a particular stench as well, which she realized now was the stink of general dirt. Dishes stacked up in the sink, magazines dotted the parlor floor where she had absently dropped them, and dust creatures hunched under furniture. This was the first time in her life she had lived alone. It had been only a couple of weeks though, and when her mother returned she would sigh into her receding chin at the state of the place, shaming her into a measure of tidiness: “Shelley, please.” Soon enough, all these troubles would be taken care of. Perhaps her mother would even work out this will and house issue with Nick’s mother, settling the whole affair so that the children didn’t have to, for once. But for now, Shelley wouldn’t lift a finger. And she would smoke inside, whenever and wherever she pleased. As she stood at the counter, her stomach had an empty-pit ache, and she wondered again just how big her first paycheck would be. She made her way up the stairs and whistled for the sole purpose of hearing a sound travel through the silent and familiar rooms.

  Walking through the uninhabited rooms of her apartment, Shelley thought of a time when they had not been. In her early years, her father was a looming presence, famous within his own house. Biddy, Elizabeth, and Shelley, they all tiptoed around him in his armchair, occasionally patting one ham-hock shoulder and refilling his drink. Shelley felt that she gave him a certain amount of contentment, as he would occasionally smile gently at her, or ruffle her hair as she passed. Back then, her mother was earnest no matter how hard she tried not to be. Her narrow shoulders squared above a steaming coffee mug for half the day, and then above a long-stemmed glass for the other half. She had become a mother at twenty-one and never been given a chance to find out who she could have been in this world. It wasn’t fair.

  Maybe things would be better now. This could be a second chance. It crossed Shelley’s mind that her mother could potentially be happier, knowing that her father was dead. As soon as she thought that though, the truth behind it kicked her in the stomach. Yes, it wasn’t fair: Roger’s death, his life, the fact that he’d never paid a lick of attention to her and now had given everything to the one child not related to him by blood. She slid herself into Biddy’s bed and wondered where her cigarette pack was. Her hand grasped fruitlessly over the rug beside the bed, until she gave up and pulled the covers around her neck. Perhaps everything could be different; she did have a new job. Mr. Kamal was distinguished and famous, in certain circles. And although he may have said harsh words, she had the feeling that he could, miraculously, identify something unique and special within her. No one had ever done that before. She wanted him to need her. She was invited back to his apartment the next day. Yousef Kamal and his faithful attaché, Shelley Whitby. She would be a calm caregiver, a cool-shouldered helper of the less fortunate. The headline would read, THE SHIPPING HEIRESS IN THE ATTIC: HOW A WHITBY WROTE A BLIND MAN’S BOOK. She smiled her family’s big-toothed smile. She had never tried very hard at anything before. Think of what could happen if she actually worked at this job! Of all the things Shelley believed in—of finding peace on the beach by the Atlantic Ocean, of not judging anyone for their sexual or musical proclivities, of calling bullshit on religious fanatics and Holy Rollers of all kinds—she believed most strongly in herself. She would get him to admit that he was, in some way, interested in her. Soon enough she’d have Mr. Kamal wrapped around her finger.

  11

  | 1982 |

  Susan Scribner did not stop drinking immediately after she sat on the side of her bathtub holding the glass box containing the pregnancy test tube. But a week later, walking out of the doctor’s office on East Sixty-Third Street with the confirmation that the red ring was not, in fact, a fluke, she vowed to dry up. She wasn’t convinced that she would make it, but she didn’t drink for the rest of that day. Her body revolted against the changes, and she threw up frequently for the next two weeks. It wasn’t until she stopped drinking that she realized how much alcohol had been a root of the problem rather than an effect of it. So one Wednesday morning she cleaned herself up and took the subway to the Spence School to ask if there was any way she could accept the job they had offered her two years earlier.

  The answer, from the headmaster Mrs. Frankel, was initially a resounding no. But the third-grade teacher had unexpectedly quit, and since Susan had the appropriate degrees, she was invited to fill the spot. Susan touched her belly and thought about how they’d have to find a replacement for a few months next winter. She said nothing of the baby to Mrs. Frankel though, and accepted the job. Over a month into her pregnancy, still sober, still nauseated, she found a new apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. She called her parents and told them about the apartment and the employment, but not the child. Her father grumbled before hanging up the phone without offering a goodbye. Susan was delighted; she was an adult and was no longer subject to his rules.

  The day that Nick was born—his full name was Nick, not Nicholas—she fell in love for the first time in her life. This child was the thing she’d been waiting for all these years. She’d been praying for a boy so that she could name him after the sensitive, stable character that she wanted to be, rather than who she was. And as soon as she saw her baby, she knew that he was her Nick Carraway. Her life revolved around Nick’s tiny knees, his boiled and mashed carrots, his happy smile. She returned to teaching the following spring and spent mornings at Spence mindlessly administering vocab tests and miniature milk cartons, then rushed home to pick up her baby from her building super’s wife, who watched him until the afternoon.

  But over the next few years, that baby became increasingly independent of her and she began, too quickly, to feel again that she was missing something. She sought out men, this time not from bars or street corners but from personal ads in the final pages of New York magazine and the Atlantic. She was looking only for a certain type, these days. But drinkless dinner after drinkless dinner, through one bland tryst after another, Susan found herself uninspired. In the back of her mind she was aware that there were no speeding cars, there was no West Egg. Where was the commotion?

  At a parent-teacher night in 1989, Susan’s life changed again. The parents of one of her worst students—a sad and troublesome, loudmouthed eight-year-old girl, the kind who taught a
ll the other children inappropriate songs and who frequently hid the glasses of the less celebrated children—came in to talk to Ms. Scribner about their daughter’s behavior. The little girl was a Whitby. Susan had seen this before at Spence, with the offspring of prominent families, families whose money was so old and reliable that their wealth seemed a matter of public record. The parents strived toward nothing, especially not good parenting.

  At a low table, in shrunken chairs, Susan made small talk with Roger and Elizabeth Whitby, discussing the Upper West Side and then California. The wife was a pale stick of a brunette, shabby from the tips of her loafers to the tops of her tweed-covered shoulder pads. The father, decades the senior of the bland woman beside him, chuckled at his daughter’s antics. “Yes, yes.” His smile was alluring, his teeth large and his jaw square. “It seems that bossiness and entitlement runs in our family. She’s destined to make a mark on this world, at least. We’ll talk to her.”

  At the end of the meeting, Roger Whitby pulled his trench coat on and corralled his stone-faced wife out the door, then popped back into the classroom for his umbrella. “Hey.” He leaned over the low table toward Susan. “I’d love to buy you a coffee, even a wine if you’d like, and find out your insider knowledge of Southern California. I have some business ventures there. Tomorrow at eight? Gramercy Tavern?” Without waiting for her response, he walked out of the room.

  What kind of a man doesn’t wait for a confirmation? The kind who had never been turned down, Susan reasoned. A little bell went off inside of her: this was a man who took risks, someone who went all in.

  The next day, at a quarter to eight, Susan sat at the bar of Gramercy Tavern, nervously munching from a dish of spiced pecans. She had never been to the Gramercy Tavern before but felt smugly at home amid the polished wood and soft music. In her seven years at the school, she’d had one affair with a father, while the rest of his family, including the young boy who was her student, had been at their East Hampton home for the weekend. The whole event was awkward and disappointing.

  That affair had been in the springtime. Now it was late March in New York, freezing and sloshy outside, when all of the city’s residents forgot that sunshine existed in the world. Susan ordered a cranberry and seltzer on the rocks. These were just the type of moments where she wished she could drink casually, wished she possessed the ability to sip a glass of rosé and simply relax. At five past the hour Roger Whitby made his way into the darkened bar with his fast yet hobbling steps and sat down on the stool beside her.

  His hair was gray, thinning at the temples, but still very much there. He took off his dripping trench coat to reveal a sack of flesh loping out over his belt buckle. But there was something sturdy about his stomach. It seemed to be made of hardened muscle. He placed a small yellow box on the stool on the other side of him, and without making eye contact with Susan, grumbled, “Thanks, thanks for meeting me.” Of course this was not a date; he was a Whitby, and he was married and had a young child.

  Roger launched right into his discussion of what his real estate business plans were in California, and how he wanted to get into developing West Coast shopping malls. He was a steady-stream talker, and she couldn’t get a word in. He waved off the bartender a few times, but finally the guy slanted over the bar and interrupted. “May I get you something, sir?”

  Roger looked up. “Bring us some of those little mushrooms with bread crumbs that you have. And escargot—Susan, do you like escargot? Of course you do, you look like a girl with good taste.” He winked.

  “And to drink?”

  “Seltzer for me. Add some lime.” Then he leaned into Susan and whispered, “I’m dry. A few months’ stretch now, but it’s been the best of my life.” Then he winked again and said the strangest thing: “It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people.”

  Susan’s heart dropped to her belly button. That was a line from Gatsby; she was sure of it. Roger Whitby, sitting next to her at a bar, both of them on the wagon, on a weekday evening in Manhattan. And he was quoting her book.

  After an hour he paid the bill while she was in the restroom, and, kissing her cheek, began to leave just as abruptly as he had arrived. There was nothing explicitly flirtatious about their interaction. But for the few minutes that he had let her speak—or demanded her to, really, asking, “What’s your favorite thing about California? Describe the air to me. What makes you desire it?”—he had appeared intensely interested in her responses.

  Roger was old and overweight, but he had hopped off the barstool with the energy of a teenager. “Hey, thanks a lot,” he said, looking toward the door like he had somewhere to be. “I learned quite a bit about the West Coast. And as a side benefit I got to learn about the beautiful Ms. Scribner.”

  Roger pointed to the flat yellow box on the chair, which Susan could now see had a professionally tied gold ribbon around it. “That’s for you. When I saw it I just couldn’t stop thinking about you. So thanks.”

  Then he hobbled out of the restaurant and, Susan could only imagine, into a cab that took him home to his family. Or maybe he had a driver. Perhaps all Whitbys were given a driver at birth. Susan gathered her things and the box, wrapped herself in her down coat, and went outside. Underneath a streetlight on the corner of Twentieth and Park, the slushy snow falling down on top of her, endless lines of cars went by, but not one taxi had its light on. Susan pulled the strand on the box’s bow and let the ribbon fall to the wet sidewalk. She took something soft and smooth out of it and held it up in the foggy light. The purple silk underwear was a size small, with nearly nothing to it. A thong in the back; small glass beads the size of seed pearls embroidered onto the gold muslin strings. Naughty, to be sure. But there was also something lavish, celebratory about them. If she wore the underwear she may in fact look like a gift herself. The tag was still tied to a strap. It read: Carine Gilson, $825.

  The affair began a few days later. Soon, Roger Whitby became a weekend staple in Susan’s, and therefore Nick’s, life. From Monday to Friday, Ms. Scribner made her seven-year-old SpaghettiOs or fish sticks for dinner, read all of the Chronicles of Narnia to him, and then started again at the beginning. She held his hand while they walked to soccer practice in Sheep Meadow, and kissed his forehead as he closed his eyes beside her at night. But come Saturday morning their lives changed. Roger would pull his black Lincoln Town Car up to the fire hydrant in front of their building, and then the three of them would drive fourteen blocks uptown to the Times Square Marriott, where Roger rented a three-room suite on the twenty-sixth floor. On these weekends, Roger often carried his favorite book with him in his overnight bag, a tattered first-edition copy of Gatsby. To Susan, this was more than a sign: it was kismet. Soon she was legitimately in love with Roger’s bravado, with his large sheltering arms, and with the constant movement and shining gifts that now filled her life.

  This hotel room became Nick’s weekend home for the following three and a half years. Every Saturday they’d arrive at the suite, then his mother would disappear behind the locked door of the other bedroom, or zip off to a lunch with Roger elsewhere in the city. It was around this time that Nick began to be very curious about who his birth father was. Although his mother never wavered from her line that she truly didn’t know, Nick found it suspicious that when Roger was in the hotel, he wasn’t just attentive to Nick but focused on him. He had a sincere interest in the child and seemed to be amused by his thoughts and antics. But when Roger and Susan were busy, they seemed to think that the hotel staff was a good enough babysitter. If he were his real father, he certainly wasn’t an ideal one. Nick’s weekends at the hotel were the birthplace of his loneliness, the original home of sadness in his life. He spent hours wandering around the different floors, entering unlocked ballrooms and conference rooms, where he turned over the padded chairs, for lack of anything else to do. Five days a week, Nick was overwhelmed by his mother’s watchful organization of his homework
, his meals, his clothes, friends, sports, and books. But on the weekends, all of this pushy attention flipped right over to Roger. Nick would never have admitted it, but on Saturdays and Sundays, he missed her deeply. Roger told Nick to order himself room service for nearly every meal. Sometimes he’d get a burger and a waffle with whipped cream and a mini pizza, and only eat a few bites of each, then hide the uneaten food in various locations around the room. It made him laugh to think about the maid finding a little surprise of pizza behind a long curtain or a waffle underneath the couch. What he also did on these weekends was become a swimmer. From the very first day he spent in the hotel, he kept a strict schedule of swimming in both the morning and evening. In fact, during the hundreds of weekends he spent at the Midtown Marriott, he never missed his swimming regimen, not once. He’d do laps, he’d time himself, he’d work on his breath capacity. By the age of nine, he was serious and disciplined, teetering on the line of extremism.

  Throughout these years, a dependence formed between Susan and Roger. From their first meeting at Gramercy Tavern, moving to California became a shared romantic dream, a mystical idea: for her, the glory of returning home a success, and for Roger, the allure of warm, pleasant days, following in the footsteps of his father, who had also fled west in his golden years. The way that New York had been a glowing goal for young Susan to attain, California became a beacon for her and Roger together.