Lucy by the Sea (Amgash, #4)(41)

But the point is this:

They had picnic tables nearby, and this is where the four of us sat. William went to the front door to pick up the food we had ordered earlier by phone, and this is where we had sat with Katherine Caskey that night, only tonight we were closer to the porch area of the actual restaurant, and this is what I saw:

A really well-dressed woman, I mean she was wearing black jeans and a blue shirt and her hair was really well done, blond but not brassy—this woman, who was maybe fifty at the most, sat with a man, I could not see him as well, but he seemed her counterpart—and this couple sat there, and I watched them, and they did not speak once during the entire meal. The woman’s face was a pretty-enough face, but it was a sad face, and as I watched she had four white wines, one after the other. They brought the wine in a plastic cup, I think because of the pandemic, and that woman sat there, and I watched her drink four cups of white wine while her husband—or whoever he was—never spoke to her, nor she to him.

I have finally seen enough of the world to know that they were well-off, or certainly much better off than the people who came from this town, and yet there they were. And I am only telling you that I understood—which of course I have understood before—that money makes no difference in these kinds of things.

You may say: Well, she was an alcoholic. But I saw her differently, even if she was an alcoholic.



* * *



—

I felt that I had seen a private terror I was not supposed to have seen. And so I did not speak of it to anyone, not to William or even to Bob. But I will never forget that woman’s face. Her sadness. Her pain. Her fear. It’s funny the things we remember, even when we think we are not remembering well anymore.





Five


i


“I am in mourning for my life,” William said to me cheerfully after breakfast one day a few weeks later as we sat on the couch and watched a summer rain come down.

“That’s a line from Chekhov,” I said. “How do you know that? I’m surprised you know that. It’s from The Seagull.”

He shrugged. “Estelle and her endless auditions.” And then William repeated, “I am in mourning for my life.”

It took me a moment. We were sitting on the couch facing the water, watching the rain pelting down. “You really are?” I said. I turned to look at him.

“Of course I am.” His hair had grown in abundantly, and with his mustache back—but it was not all the way back, and his scalp had spots of baldness on it—he looked both familiar to me and yet a version of a man much older than I thought of William. I thought he must mean because of his prostate that he had said that. But I just said, “Tell me.”

“Oh Lucy, come on. I sit here and think over my life, and I think, Who have I been? I have been an idiot.”

“In what way?” I asked him.

And interestingly he answered first about his profession. “I have taught student after student after student, but did I make a real contribution to science? No.”

I opened my mouth, but he held up his hand to stop me.

“And on a personal level, look how I have lived my life.”

I thought he must have been talking about his affairs. But he was not. He said, pointing out the window, “Look at that tower, Lucy. My father’s father—that horrible old man we met when we went to Germany so many years ago—my grandfather was making money on World War II.” He looked over at me. “He was making money on these submarines that were coming right into this harbor. He was a huge industrialist, and all he cared about was making money, and he did—during the war. And he stuck it all in Switzerland.” He hesitated for a long time, looking out the window.

Then he looked at me again. “And I took that money, Lucy. Don’t tell me how much I’ve given away, I know I’ve given away a lot of money, but no one ever gives away enough to actually change their lifestyle, and so I took that money, and I still have that money.” He looked away, then back at me. “And it makes me absolutely sick.”



* * *



—

I said nothing. Out of respect, I stayed quiet.



* * *



—

William stood up and said softly, “Even my mother told me I shouldn’t take the money, but I did.” He walked to the window and looked out, and then he turned back to me and said, “Did you know that my father—right before he died—he was supposed to come into that money, and he didn’t take it.”

I was really surprised to hear that, and I said so.

William sighed, and sat down again on the couch, and said, “That’s why my mother didn’t think I should take it, because my father was decent enough not to. And I rationalized it for years. It was mine, I told myself, no different from any rich kid who gets money from his CEO father. But it is different. My grandfather made it on a war that was unbelievably horrifying. My father didn’t want it, and I did.”

William stood up again, and he kept walking around as he spoke. He said, “My grandfather was greedy and he was smart. And what’s happening in this country right now is mostly because of greed as well.” He turned back to face me. He said, “And you can say, Well, just give it away, William, what’s the big deal? But if I gave it all away today, and I’m not going to, what difference would it make? None. But it’s money that was the result of huge damage in this world, and the world can be damaged all over again. And I have just lived here with that money all these years.” He turned and sat back down on the couch and pushed his hand through his hair, which made his hair stand up in different ways.