About Schmidt by Louis Begley Read Free Book Online Page B

were more than a cut above usual book party fare, didn’t hurt. But he realized that their guests came, and invited them back, because of Mary: she was a powerful editor and she was genuinely liked. Her own authors, of course, were assiduous; so were many others who aspired to be published by her. The invitations to large parties continued during the summer that followed Mary’s death. Mostly Schmidt declined or, having accepted, at thelast minute decided to remain at home. He didn’t like to find himself standing on those broad lawns or under well-pruned trees, glass in hand, on the edge of the crowd as though its roar were a centrifugal force that had expelled him, too sad or too timid to push his way to the hostess or to break into conversations—groups didn’t open to include Schmidt; journalists didn’t race to greet him—that had no relation to his grief. Besides, he was certain that any effort he made would leave him fearing he did not have sufficient respect for Mary. He might have wanted to go to some of the small weekday or Sunday-night dinners Mary and he used to attend; but, with a few exceptions, which he was able to relate afterward to the presence at table of an unaccompanied female houseguest, his telephone didn’t ring. He wasn’t invited. Possibly it was because he hadn’t been seen at the larger gatherings; people could well think he had decided to travel. The continuing flow of invitations to such events didn’t contradict his theory. He was simply on the list for the Xs’ or the Ys’ standard summer parties, invitations to which were typically addressed and mailed by the secretary of one of the members of the household. There was no more to it than that. At one of the book parties he did attend, the hostess, a literary agent who represented several of Mary’s authors, directly after offering Schmidt condolences and the usual odious apology for not having expressed them in writing, made a remark that offended him, and stuck in his mind.
    You must be the hottest property around! An eligible new widower living in his own house in the Hamptons! Only one child, and fully grown! The females must be camping in your driveway!
    I am too old, he had replied, whereupon his hostess saidthat was nonsense, offering him the example of Ed Tiger and Jack Bernstein, both of whom were older than Schmidt and had just procreated. If you fall in love with a younger woman, anything can happen!
    Perhaps, but Schmidt wasn’t ready, certainly not for a member of the younger generation with her own children to raise or, worse yet, an urge to beat the chronological clock. That was, he believed, the way one put it. And it seemed to him that he was unlikely ever to be tempted, either by the houseguests to whom he owed his presence at those dinners, or by this cheerful literary person or the other women of his acquaintance, assuming that, even if married, or
en ménage
, they were all indeed candidates for his bed, and perhaps his hand, simply because he was in theory available and not yet on welfare. Time had not singled out these women particularly for harsh treatment. Rather, it seemed to Schmidt that loss of the ability to attract was an affliction as generalized among his female coevals as thinness of hair, the sclera and teeth turned yellow, sour breath, flaccidity or gigantism of breasts, midriffs gone soft and distended by wind, brown splotches and deltas of minute angry veins around the knee and on the calf, disastrous, swollen toes verging on deformity displayed in sandals or throbbing in the prison of black pumps. To tease Mary, he used to tell her what, in fact, he thought was the truth: that his own loss of libido, from the effects of which she was exempt (and this was so until the time, almost at the end, when pity for her body overwhelmed both desire and habit) had less to do with his own aging than with the aging of the women around him.
    How could one, he would ask, referring to one or another of their