Fifty-seventh Street didn’t necessitate her getting out of bed until nearly ten o’clock, made it impossible for Benjamin to complain. Complaint would have been boorish and ungrateful, so Benjamin sat there, stuffing food into his mouth, furtively stealing glances at the headlines on the chair beside him, wondering daily by what ruse he could manage in the future to keep his wife in bed while he ate and drank as he pleased and grunted sardonically at the columns of The New York Times.
During the war, too, he had gotten into the habit of drinking a small slug of Calvados or brandy before breakfast, and this was impossible with Peggy up and about. There were also the mornings when he had a hangover. When he drank, he often became ugly and pugnacious, and Peggy’s silent forbearance on the subject of the scenes of the night before made him want to strangle her as she sat across from him, sipping her cold milk like a little girl and looking like something just a little bit better than a colored photograph from House and Garden.
She also discussed the menus for dinner at breakfast. Surfeited with food, facing with loathing the difficulties and compromises of a young man struggling to get ahead one day more in the heartbreaking city of New York, he found it almost impossible to concentrate on such questions as, “Would you like a soufflé?” or “I saw some wonderful sea bass in the market yesterday. Are you in the mood for fish?” and, “Remember, we have to sit down for dinner at seven sharp. Prudence has to be up in Harlem by eight-thirty, the latest.” Prudence was their maid, who came in at one in the afternoon and, as Peggy accurately put it, had to be up in Harlem by eight-thirty sharp each evening come what may.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love Peggy. He did, and often enjoyed long periods with her, and he had never gotten over his joy in her body or his appreciation of her tenderness and the amusement she gave him by her brightness and outspokenness. He just felt a good part of the time that it was too much. She surrounded him. She had had so many anxious, lonely years to contemplate her marriage, wondering all the time whether he was going to come back alive or not, that she had figured everything out too perfectly—the décor of the apartment, the meals she was going to serve and how they were to be served, her husband’s marvelous and impossible behavior on all occasions, the people she would invite and who would invite them in return, the holidays they would take, the perfect exchange of love after the last gun had fallen silent. Benjamin sometimes felt that, in an excess of devotion, Peggy had managed to put him into a perfect vacuum in which everything was offered to him, everything allowed him, except getting out of the vacuum.
He drank, he slept with other women, he paid the bills, he felt that soon he and Louis would break through in their business, he admired the results of Peggy’s loving calculation, her unswerving selflessness—but there were evenings when he walked along the avenues of New York, looking longingly at the clerks and pathetically bedecked secretaries bursting out of their ugly offices for an evening that, good or bad, had not been planned for them, and thought seriously of throwing himself under a bus because he knew he had to be home by seven o’clock. Sharp.
It was a Saturday morning. Those days, people worked on Saturday mornings. There were jonquils on the breakfast table because it was spring. The sun was shining on the plane tree, with its new pale green foliage, in the back garden of the apartment in which Benjamin and Peggy lived on East Seventy-sixth Street near Second Avenue. Looking out at the sunlit tree, Benjamin thought that the human race must be insane to inhabit cities in the springtime.
Peggy had made an apple pancake with maple syrup for breakfast. Benjamin didn’t like apple pancakes, except once in a while in a German restaurant for dessert, but his
During the war, too, he had gotten into the habit of drinking a small slug of Calvados or brandy before breakfast, and this was impossible with Peggy up and about. There were also the mornings when he had a hangover. When he drank, he often became ugly and pugnacious, and Peggy’s silent forbearance on the subject of the scenes of the night before made him want to strangle her as she sat across from him, sipping her cold milk like a little girl and looking like something just a little bit better than a colored photograph from House and Garden.
She also discussed the menus for dinner at breakfast. Surfeited with food, facing with loathing the difficulties and compromises of a young man struggling to get ahead one day more in the heartbreaking city of New York, he found it almost impossible to concentrate on such questions as, “Would you like a soufflé?” or “I saw some wonderful sea bass in the market yesterday. Are you in the mood for fish?” and, “Remember, we have to sit down for dinner at seven sharp. Prudence has to be up in Harlem by eight-thirty, the latest.” Prudence was their maid, who came in at one in the afternoon and, as Peggy accurately put it, had to be up in Harlem by eight-thirty sharp each evening come what may.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love Peggy. He did, and often enjoyed long periods with her, and he had never gotten over his joy in her body or his appreciation of her tenderness and the amusement she gave him by her brightness and outspokenness. He just felt a good part of the time that it was too much. She surrounded him. She had had so many anxious, lonely years to contemplate her marriage, wondering all the time whether he was going to come back alive or not, that she had figured everything out too perfectly—the décor of the apartment, the meals she was going to serve and how they were to be served, her husband’s marvelous and impossible behavior on all occasions, the people she would invite and who would invite them in return, the holidays they would take, the perfect exchange of love after the last gun had fallen silent. Benjamin sometimes felt that, in an excess of devotion, Peggy had managed to put him into a perfect vacuum in which everything was offered to him, everything allowed him, except getting out of the vacuum.
He drank, he slept with other women, he paid the bills, he felt that soon he and Louis would break through in their business, he admired the results of Peggy’s loving calculation, her unswerving selflessness—but there were evenings when he walked along the avenues of New York, looking longingly at the clerks and pathetically bedecked secretaries bursting out of their ugly offices for an evening that, good or bad, had not been planned for them, and thought seriously of throwing himself under a bus because he knew he had to be home by seven o’clock. Sharp.
It was a Saturday morning. Those days, people worked on Saturday mornings. There were jonquils on the breakfast table because it was spring. The sun was shining on the plane tree, with its new pale green foliage, in the back garden of the apartment in which Benjamin and Peggy lived on East Seventy-sixth Street near Second Avenue. Looking out at the sunlit tree, Benjamin thought that the human race must be insane to inhabit cities in the springtime.
Peggy had made an apple pancake with maple syrup for breakfast. Benjamin didn’t like apple pancakes, except once in a while in a German restaurant for dessert, but his
Similar Books
