Edmund White - Our Young Man

Guy’s mother heated up a daube and spooned it out for her children. It wasn’t half bad, Guy said to himself, and then hated himself for even noticing. This was hardly a moment to be handing out stars for cuisine. Robert came home after they’d been served and spent fifteen minutes washing grease from his hands and arms and lingered five minutes looking at his sleeping father. He said he had a kayak and spent a lot of time boating and paddling. He checked out Guy’s wasp waist and muttered his teenage nickname, Sec (“Dry”). Robert’s neck, however, was cross-hatched with tiny squares — the sun, no doubt. Real men don’t moisturize.

While their mother was in the kitchen fetching the dessert, Robert said, “You seem to be prospering.”

“Can’t complain.”

“You know, at the garage I have a chance to get a good price on an ’82 Opel. Mom needs a new car.”

Guy said, “Sure.” He felt guilty because he hadn’t thought about her car; New Yorkers weren’t part of car culture, though he had his Mercedes. “How much is it?”

“I think I can get it for thirty-two hundred francs.”

“Thank you for arranging it.”

“What do you drive?”

“Mercedes SEL.”

Robert winced, the way he always had. “I’m sorry I haven’t been contributing my part to help Mom. But at the garage … and with three kids …” ( gosses , he said, a word Guy had almost forgotten). “And I make all the repairs around here. You’re never here.”

Oh, dear , Guy thought. “That’s our deal,” he said smoothly. “You look in on Mother”—he glanced at Tiphaine—“and you do, too. Money is the easy part. I’m so grateful to both of you.” He didn’t want to sound hypocritical; they had never been this polite, this deferential around each other before. He smiled forbearingly at his siblings with a look that pleaded, he hoped, for sympathy and, if he’d somehow offended them, for forgiveness.

“What’s this, what’s this?” their mother sang out in a forced, cheerful voice as she brought in the chocolate mousse. It was his favorite, at least according to family legend, though he hadn’t eaten a dessert in twenty years. But he’d heard her whipping the cream in the kitchen and he knew he couldn’t refuse it.

“We’re going to give you a new-old car, an Opel,” Guy said. “Robert’s arranging it.”

“But that’s too extravagant,” their mother cried. “The old one—”

“Robert’s getting it at a good price. And he’ll make sure it runs well.”

Guy worried that Robert would resent this last assertion, that Guy was being a busybody, but Robert was smiling and saying Guy would pay for it out of his New World riches. “And I’ll wash it and vacuum it once a month,” Tiphaine threw in lightheartedly.

Their mother seemed overwhelmed. She had tears in her eyes and looked at Guy. “You already do so much for me. How did I deserve such a loving son? If I’d economized better—”

Guy held a finger to his lips and shushed her. “No one else could make so little money go so far. I’m the one at fault, I’ve been thoughtless. I haven’t taken into account that the dollar’s been getting weaker. I will double your allowance and buy the car if Robert will be so kind as to handle the transaction and do the maintenance — that’s the hard part.”

As was her nature, their mother cleared the dishes before everyone was done. When she came back in she said, “How is that nice … Baron Édouard?” she asked, uncomfortable with his title but fearing, no doubt, that a simple “monsieur” would be rude or sound presumptuous. Tiphaine and Robert exchanged glances and a smirk, as if they were privy to a private joke.

“Oh, Édouard?” Guy said lazily. “He’s always the same, never changes. I guess rich people don’t change as much as the rest of us; we have to hustle. Except now he’s crazy about antiques and is pawing through everyone’s attic or barn, looking for a treasure. He asks after you … often.” Seeing that his brother and sister were still smirking, he hoped to defuse their satire by asking, “Do you think he’s a real baron? Or a Jew ennobled by the prince of Lichtenstein for making a big loan? Or do businessmen just use titles for prestige? I read that one quarter of all titles in Europe are fake.”

“Fake? Fake?” their mother shrieked, horrified as if he’d questioned the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. “He seemed to me authentic and a charming, generous man.”

Guy wondered if she’d think him so charming if she could see him naked and barking.

Robert at least had stopped sneering. “I guess you must meet a lot of phonies in the fashion industry?”

Guy wondered how he could respond calmly to this remark. “I suppose all worlds have their fakes. Even garage mechanics. But strictly speaking Édouard isn’t in fashion. He’s a brewer.”

Robert nodded solemnly. Their mother muttered, “In any event a very charming man, truly elegant.”

At that moment they heard their father — whose bed had been moved downstairs into the salon — groan, and their mother rushed to his side and the three children followed her slowly, timidly. “We’re here, my darling,” their mother cooed. “We’re right here, chéri, your whole family, your three children and me, you’re not alone,” but Guy thought that was a lie, you’re never so alone as at the moment of your death.

Their father was gasping and their mother turned up the flow of oxygen and was patting down the sides of his square, transparent tent as if sealing a leak. Now he was sitting up and coughing and his face looked as red a baby’s when it starts to cry.

I wonder who will be with me at the hour of my death , Guy wondered, then he mentally slapped himself for being morbid and self-pitying. With a trusted servant, he hoped, chuckling at his own frivolity. A servant who would know just how to arrange the pillows, tilt the lampshade, administer the opiate. A servant who would mourn, but only ceremonially, while speculating how generous her legacy would be. Guy knew how to deal with calculated kindness.

The next morning Tiphaine drove him to the train station after Guy had written down Robert’s bank details for a transfer of funds for the Opel. He kissed his father goodbye, who was sleeping now and blue, not red. His mother was crying silently, seated beside his father; she herself was so frail she scarcely indented the mattress.

He and Tiphaine stopped by to see their grandmother, the one who’d worked as a cashier in a Paris café. She’d become almost feral and slept with three big dogs, more for the warmth than out of love for the animals. She who had always been so chic in her way now wore a dirty old bathrobe covered with dog hairs and slippers too big for her feet. She didn’t have her teeth in and her eyebrows had grown in, big heavy caterpillars. Guy had always felt closest to her; after all, she was the Parisian, and she was the one who’d first told him he was handsome. But now she was a grinning savage, and her eyes didn’t reveal if she recognized her grandchildren.

A day after Guy returned to Paris, his father went into the hospital with pneumonia. Guy volunteered to return home, but his mother said that the doctor had told them that this could go on for months, and besides, his father was seldom conscious now. They’d turned up the morphine and turned down the antibiotics and were hoping he’d just slip away.

Two days later, the phone rang at two A.M. and his mother was saying tonelessly it was all over. Guy wanted to ask her if she was relieved but he didn’t know if that was what human beings asked. So he asked instead what he thought Robert would say: When was the funeral mass going to be held, and did she need any money?