A Ladder to the Sky(87)

‘Blame you for what?’ asked Daniel, who had seemed to rather enjoy telling a stranger all the details of his day-to-day pedagogical life and the sexual harassment that he’d suffered from a girl whose attentions he had never encouraged.

‘Blame me for anything,’ replied Maurice. ‘There’s a good chance that, when you’re a teenager and complaining about how I’ve ruined your life, you’ll bring this up and say that it all started here.’

Daniel shrugged; he wasn’t interested. His breath caught a little and he reached into his bag for his inhaler, taking a quick puff. Maurice sat quietly, his sunglasses resting on his nose, watching the people go by. One of his own interns marched past, oblivious to his presence on the bench, while reading something on his phone. He was carrying a luxurious brown saddle bag over his shoulder and Maurice wondered how the boy could afford it – it was an expensive brand – but then recalled that his mother was on the board of the New York Ballet and so, presumably, he came from money.

And then, to his dismay, he noticed Henrietta James walking in his direction, still covered in multiple layers of clothing, as if she were about to embark for the Arctic, and before he could tell the boy that it was time to go she’d spotted him too and was waving manically at him, as if trying to generate her own electricity with her arms.

‘Hello, you,’ she said, grinning like the cat who’d got the cream.

‘Henrietta,’ he said, standing up to kiss her on both cheeks. ‘How nice to see you!’

‘And who’s this?’ she asked, looking down at Daniel, who barely glanced up from his ice-cream.

‘This is my son,’ said Maurice. ‘Daniel.’

‘How charming!’ she said. ‘I’ll join you for a few minutes, if you don’t mind,’ she added, not waiting for an answer as she sat down. ‘I need to rest. It’s been a horrendous day. My publisher emailed me the proposed jacket for I Am Dissatisfied with My Boyfriend, My Body and My Career and it was so awful that I came all the way downtown to tell her exactly what I thought of it. I might not have been as polite as I could have been and we left things on a rather sour note. Lashings of apologies to make later, I daresay.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,’ said Maurice.

‘What an adorable little boy,’ she said, smiling a little as she reached a hand out to ruffle Daniel’s hair, but when he looked up and narrowed his eyes, emitting a low growling sound from the back of his throat like a threatened animal, she changed her mind and made a hasty retreat.

‘Is he staying with you for the summer?’ she asked, and now it was Maurice’s turn to frown, uncertain what she meant, before realizing that she probably assumed he was divorced.

‘No, he lives with me,’ said Maurice.

‘Oh. And your … partner? Your …?’

‘My wife died some years ago,’ he said, a non-sequitur, of course, since Edith had borne no relationship to Daniel, but he had no intention of getting into the intricacies of his life with an author he barely knew and didn’t much like.

‘Maurice, I’m so sorry,’ she replied, lowering her voice. ‘I had no idea.’

‘And now you do.’

‘It’s a bit like Kramer vs Kramer, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘How so?’

‘You know, when Meryl Streep walks out on Dustin Hoffman and he doesn’t know how to cope at first with the little boy. He can barely even cook dinner. But then they form a connection that’s been missing since he was born and, when Meryl comes back, Dustin doesn’t want to give the child up and they have the most frightful rows.’

Maurice stared at her, wondering how someone so stupid could have publishers begging for her work. ‘As I said, my wife died,’ he said quietly. ‘So I don’t think she’s going to show up demanding custodial rights any time soon.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ said Henrietta, who didn’t look entirely convinced that this would be the case. ‘Oh, by the way, I meant to tell you. I sold that story.’

‘Which story?’

‘The one you rejected.’

‘I didn’t reject it, Henrietta,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I simply passed on it for now as I didn’t think it was a good fit for our next issue.’

‘That sounds a lot like semantics to me, which is unworthy of you. You hated it. Just be honest and tell the truth.’

The same thing, thought Maurice.

‘All right, fine,’ he said, throwing his hands in the air. ‘You’re right. I hated it.’

Henrietta sat back in her chair in shock, as if he’d just pulled a gun on her or told her that he’d impregnated her mother. ‘That’s a little rude, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Well, you’re so insistent on the point that it seems easier to agree with you than anything else.’

‘So you didn’t hate it, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, smiling a little. ‘What do you think?’

She stared at him, looking as if she was torn between annoyance and laughter, but finally gave in to the latter, slapping his knee sharply.

‘You shouldn’t hit people,’ said Daniel, sitting up straight.

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.