David Gates: A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

The new wife might have been pregnant then, though she wasn’t showing; their son must be a teenager now. I hear her on the radio all the time—maybe you do too. She’s the one who does that two-minute spot every day on NPR: A Word in Edgewise , explaining what she calls the “always-surprising” origins of common words and phrases. The theme music is Tom Tom Club’s “Wordy Rappinghood”—that’s what she calls herself—and it runs on something like a hundred stations all over the country. Pictures on her website suggest she hasn’t lost her looks, though who knows how recent they are. So in every way he traded up. And really, God bless him. Did you know that the word “maudlin”—but of course you do.

2

My husband was still feeling sorry for himself when my editor sent me to interview a once-almost-famous architect. The common council in Peekskill had approved his plan for converting a block of the old downtown into galleries and artists’ lofts; as if this weren’t enough booster appeal, he’d grown up in the Hudson Valley and had recently moved back after years in the city. Said to be an amateur musician, and a friend of Philip Roth’s. Two thousand words, maybe three if he turned out to be a good talker. I’d never heard of this man—how many architects has anybody heard of?—but back in the seventies the Times had called him “a charter member of a loosely allied group of younger practitioners of quite wide diversity who are known as postmodernists.” He was in his forties then, which I guess was the Times ’s idea of younger, and had done “important” buildings in Düsseldorf, Turin, São Paulo, Shanghai and Cleveland. He’d gotten his degree from Columbia, and went back there to teach. Married to a viola player with the Steve Reich Ensemble. The most recent clip I could find was from 1989.

When I came into the coffee shop in Rhinebeck, a bell dinged above the door and a man at a corner table looked up from reading, lifted his chin, got to his feet and pulled out a chair for me. I’d said I’d be wearing a maroon silk blouse—actually rayon, but I thought I’d keep it simple for him—and carrying a leather shoulder bag. He’d told me to look for “a graying gentleman with a Mets cap”; I’m afraid my piece described him as “a tall, vigorous man, with hawklike features, whose restless energy belies his sixty-five years.” (In time to come, he would wake me from a nap and say, “Mind if I belie you?” But let’s not get ahead of our story.) He had broad hands, long fingers, no ring.

Before leaving home, I’d undone my top button and leaned into the mirror to check the effect: just enough to make a graying gentleman talkative. But after an initial up-and-down—what man can refrain?—he kept his eyes on my face or on the tabletop, drumming his fingers on a copy of The New York Review of Books (such an obvious prop that I didn’t mention it in the piece) and massaging, with thumb and forefinger, the bridge of his not-all-that-hawklike nose.

I walked him through his influences: everything, he said, from Bauhaus to the outhouse—a line he’d used in one of the old interviews I’d read. How did he define postmodernism? He didn’t, but I was welcome to have a go at it. When he and Philip Roth got together, did they talk about writing, or architecture, or both? “Now where on earth did you hear that ?” he said. “I’m an admirer , of course, but—you’re not thinking of Philip Glass?” Was he still teaching? Only by negative example. What did he do between projects? Well, he used not to be between projects, but these days he went to his workroom and painted. What were his paintings like? If I were to see them, I’d understand why he’d become an architect. Could I see them? No. What prompted him to leave New York? Prompted? That sounded rather Pavlovian. He’d had a weekend house here for…God, how many years? Let’s just say it had gotten time to simplify. And of course he’d spent his childhood in this part of the world; he supposed I knew his father had taught at Bard during its glory years, which wasn’t to say Leon wasn’t doing a magnificent job. He’d always thought there was something strange and magical about the landscape—in fact, if you went back to the Hudson River School…

I got him off that as soon as I decently could—my editor hated what he called thumbsucking—and onto the project in Peekskill. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Down to business. Good Lord, Peekskill, what can one say? It was a bit of a five-finger exercise—actually, don’t quote me on that. Let’s say it was a way of giving back to the community.”

“Oh?” I said. “So are you giving them a hometown discount?”

That made him look at me.

“Aren’t you devilish,” he said. “Peekskill’s a rat hole. Not without its dingy charms, but I hardly see it as the new SoHo. Is that the scoop you were looking for? Stir up a little small-town hoo-hah? Tell me something—am I right in thinking you’re as bored with all this as I am? If you’ve got what you need, let’s you and I go have a drink.”

All these years later, I can’t remember what I thought I was doing, if thinking came into it at all. He was intelligent, still handsome, obviously complicated, sufficiently knowing to discern that I was bored, though that probably required no great discernment. My husband would never have called Peekskill a rat hole, which is exactly what it was. I might have thought that an hour’s worth of flirtation would do us both good. He seemed lonely—where was the wife?—but too civilized to embarrass himself. Not having been touched in weeks, not since the brooding about the baseball book started, I might simply have wanted to feel my power over a man.

So I followed his shiny new pickup truck—naturally I liked the pickup truck—to a cinder-block bar outside of town, with neon signs in the windows, a pool table and a single TV. “I thought this place might be noir enough for a hard-boiled newshound like you,” he said. “Whiskey? Or do you want a girl drink?”

“Those are my choices?” I said.

“I certainly wouldn’t recommend the wine list here. And I don’t see you as a beer drinker.”

“In that case,” I said. He ordered us two Jack Daniel’s.

“So is this your regular hang?” I said.

“Oh, just when I’m feeling particularly louche. All the bars in Dutchess County were like Duffy’s Tavern when I was a kid—you don’t know what that is. Okay, here’s my favorite joke. ‘Have you lived here all your life, old-timer?’ ‘Not yet.’  ”

“That’s your favorite?”

“Only because it’s not funny. May I grill you for a change? You’re young, obviously bright, and here you are. Writing for the Hudson Valley Whosis .”

“Is that a question? I might say here you are.”

“Meaning why am I not in Barcelona or some goddamn place, campaigning for the Pritzker Prize? I know what I am at this point. I like just going up to my workroom, putting on some music and painting the hours away. And I like hearing the birds in the morning. What do you like? What would you like?”

“I don’t know. To get through the day?”

“Aren’t you a romantic.” He emptied his glass—they were little ones—and raised two fingers. “Sorry, I don’t mean to make light of it. It’s hell to be young. But it does get better. Until it gets worse.”

“How does it get better?”

“I suppose it’s what Yeats said—find your work and choose your mate. Does anyone read Yeats anymore? Or maybe it’s choose your work and find your mate. I see you’ve already got half of it covered.” He touched a finger to my wedding band. “Or is this just a professional accessory, to keep the men at bay?”