9780307700650: Schmidt Steps Back
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307700658 ISBN 13: 9780307700650
Verlag: Random House LCC US, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

When we last saw Albert Schmidt Esq. (“Schmidtie” to all near and dear), he had been expelled from paradise: his love Carrie, the Puerto Rican waitress forty years his junior, had taken up with a blond giant nearer her age and possibly the father of her baby—assuming it isn’t Schmidt. Meanwhile, his only confirmed child, Charlotte, had proposed a truce in their perennially strained relations, which Schmidt accepted, despite its obliging him to resume dealings with her repulsive husband and her mother-in-law-cum-psychiatrist, whose life’s work has been turning Charlotte decisively against Schmidt.

The curtain rises on Schmidt Steps Back some thirteen years later: New Year’s Eve 2008, the dawn of the age of Obama. Schmidt’s affection for the young president-elect is boundless, and as he imagines a better day for his country, he dares to hope there’s one for him too. It so happens Schmidtie is readying his Hamptons house for the visit of a lady from Paris: the irresistible Alice Verplanck, widow of his former law partner and surely a more appropriate prospect for a man now seventy-eight. But there’s a history, and it’s complicated. In fact, Schmidt hasn’t seen Alice since the summer of 1995, when he behaved like a brute upon discovering a betrayal of sorts and pronounced her unworthy of his unstinting love and commitment. Alice is finally ready to forgive him, but she still doubts that Schmidtie can ever be content. She demands that he think long and hard about their past, and while he’s at it Schmidtie finds himself also reviewing the reversals and tragedies that have brought him to an unimagined isolation and loneliness. With no family he can claim but Carrie, now married and expecting a second child, and only two real friends left—his college roommate Gil Blackman and the irrepressible billionaire Mike Mansour—Schmidt sees in Alice’s impending visit his last chance, before the sun sets on the Hamptons, for a life that is more than merely staying alive.

At once darkly funny and deeply poignant, Schmidt Steps Back is the most emotionally nuanced installment of the drama that began with the acclaimed About Schmidt. Here is Louis Begley’s finest novel yet.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Louis Begley lives in New York City. His previous novels are About Schmidt, As Max Saw It, The Man Who Was Late, Matters of Honor, Mistler’s Exit, Schmidt Delivered, Shipwreck, and Wartime Lies.

www.louisbegley.com

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I

New Year’s Eve, eight o’clock in the morning. Sixteen more hours until the end of another shitty year of a shitty decade. What would the year ahead bring? For the nation that had—­unbelievably, miraculously—­overcome its history and was sending Barack Obama to the White House, Schmidt hoped it would bring redemption and cleansing. He was caught off guard by the tears that filled his eyes with the sleeve of his parka to wipe away. Sweet tears of pride. Was there anyone, he wondered, outside Obama’s family, of course, whose affection for the man was as great and as pure as Schmidt’s? He dared to think there wasn’t: his feelings for this extraordinary young man transcended partisan politics. They had little or nothing to do, he thought, with his having backed the Democratic ticket in national elections ever since Adlai Stevenson’s second run for the presidency. The first time around, he had been too young to vote, but in 1956, realizing that Ike was going to win, he cast his vote against him out of principle and also for the fun of exasperating his father, who had adopted the reactionary convictions of his Greek shipowner clients along with their taste for custom-­made shoes and suits. No, this love—­why not use that word?—­for Obama existed on an altogether different level, melding with Schmidt’s love for his country. Schmidt had another, more personal reason to rejoice: the hope that the curse he had laid upon himself thirteen years ago—­a curse compounded of all the worst in him: jealousy and its cognate envy, blind pride, and quick unforgiving anger—­had been conjured. Perhaps there was a better time ahead for him as well.

He picked up the New York Times at the beginning of the driveway, walked back to the house, and before going in checked the thermometer on the front porch. A chilly twenty-­five degrees. With luck, by late morning it would be noticeably warmer, a good thing, inasmuch as he wanted Alice’s adjustment to the caprices of Eastern Seaboard weather to be a gradual one. Four days earlier, the temperature had risen to an astonishing fifty-­eight degrees, a record Schmidt had read in the Times. Christmas Day had been a cooler but still ludicrously balmy fifty-­four degrees. According to the Times’s weather forecast, the pendulum would swing all the way back on the first day of 2009: low of ten, high of twenty-­five. He deposited the newspaper on the kitchen table and went out again for his ritual morning inspection of the property. Sonia would be arriving in a few minutes to put his breakfast on the table. It was an unnecessary task—­he was quite capable of preparing his own breakfast—­but there was so little work in the house these days that, believing firmly that nothing demoralizes staff as quickly as idleness, he felt pressed to find things for her to do. The big snow—­more than five inches—­dumped on Bridgehampton in the space of a few hours the week before Christmas had melted in the warm weather, reviving the grass. It sparkled green as in early June. Everything else looked good too, especially the azalea and rhododendron on the far edge of the back lawn. Somehow the marauding deer had spared them, even without the usual protective black nylon netting he had instructed Gus Parrish not to use. When the gardener, taken aback, had asked why, Schmidt heard himself admit the embarrassing truth: the netting made the bushes look to him like prehistoric beasts poised to advance on the house. The sight made him uneasy. It was Schmidt’s turn to be surprised when Gus acceded to the wish without the least indication of thinking his client had gone bonkers. Such discretion was cause once again for Schmidt to congratulate himself on having hired Gus’s outfit to take over when Jim Bogard’s nephew finally followed his uncle into retirement. All told, the Bogards had looked after the property since before it had passed to Schmidt, when it still belonged to Mary’s aunt Martha, and he and Mary, his late wife, and their daughter, Charlotte, would come to spend weekends and vacations there as Martha’s nearest relations and guests. Confidence is rewarded more often than mistrust. He had told Gus that he had a special reason for wanting the place to look spick-­and-­span on New Year’s Eve, and Gus had come through. In fact, Schmidt’s experience with Gus had led him to believe that when it came to reliability and finish, which at Schmidt’s old law firm was quaintly called “completed staff work,” Gus’s people were to other gardeners in the Hamptons what Wood & King had been to the lesser breeds of New York lawyers practicing personal injury law out of offices near City Hall or Borough Hall and, ever since all restraints on advertising had broken down, touting their services in Spanish-­language ads in subway cars. Gus’s eye-­popping bills were part and parcel of the deal, and they too recalled W & K. The name of each of the friendly Colombians who lavished care on Schmidt’s lawn, edged the flower beds, and blew away fallen leaves with the infernal roar that threw into a panic Schmidt’s old Siamese Sy and his new Abyssinian kitten Pi, was followed by his billing rate, a description of the services performed, and the time spent on the task. The hours, Schmidt was sure, were discreetly padded, a time-­honored practice of W & K associates as well. Telephone call with Mr. Schmidt, so many tenths of an hour, revising a memo in accordance with his remarks, two hours and seven-­tenths of an hour, researching at Mr. Schmidt’s request points X, Y, and Z to back up the memo, eleven hours and one-­tenth. Really, Mr. Schmidt would ask himself: eleven and one-­tenth hours in one day? Whether the invoice was from W & K or Gus, the billable-­hour entries would be followed by a list of expenses subject to reimbursement. Telephone toll calls, postage, messenger services, duplicating, late-­evening meals, and taxi fare home from the office became, in the backup to Gus’s bills, so many bags of eight sorts of fertilizer and weed and insect killers, and when the chattering Colombian ladies, who planted and weeded, joined the crew, also bulbs and plants and potting soil.

He heard Sonia’s car on the driveway, a white Mercedes, and a fairly late model no less, the provenance of which had been puzzling him ever since the summer when she first showed up in it. Did it belong to a boyfriend? Had she won it at a church raffle or bought it with her savings? In the latter case, he was overpaying her. But how would he get the answer if he persisted in not asking the question? Time for breakfast. He greeted Sonia and sat down. The coffee was boiling hot and strong, the yogurt not half bad, the grapes excellent. Missing were the croissants and scones that he used to buy each morning at Sesame, the wonderful caterer where he still got chicken salad, cheese, and ravioli in brodo. The memory of those pastries, banished from his breakfast table by Dr. Tang, the Chinese-­American lady who took over from his old friend and family physician, David Kendall, upon his retirement, made his mouth water. It made him wonder, too, whether he knew anyone who had not retired. Yes, of course: Gil Blackman, his college roommate and best friend, still making films; Mike Mansour, as busy as ever with his billions; and the splendid Caroline Canning and her awful husband, Joe, scribbling away.

Silly business, Schmidt thought, Dr. Tang’s attention to his diet. In their own way so were the ministrations of Gus and his predecessors, continued in accordance with his orders every year since Aunt Martha died and left the house to Mary. How many years...

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Verlag
Random House LCC US
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307700658
ISBN 13 
9780307700650
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
369
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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Softcover