The crowd, incidentally, was slightly different from the lunch group. There were, to be sure, a few suspected mafioso types, but there were also some uptown Manhattanites as well, people who spent their entire urban lives trying to discover new restaurants that nobody knows about yet, except the two hundred people in the place. Well, the uptown crowd was going to have something interesting to report after this meal. Anyway, there were also a lot of greasy young Guidos in the place with their girlfriends, who looked like slim Annas, just dying to get married so they could blow up like stuffed cannelloni. And there was this old geezer with a four-day beard squeezing the whaddayacallit – the concertina – while the fat lady sang. Frank gave the old guy a twenty to play "Santa Lucia", and this must have been on the goombah hit parade because everybody joined in, including Susan, who somehow knew all the words in Italian. Actually, it's a pretty song and I found myself humming it. Well, the place was packed and smelled like garlic and perfume, and everybody was in a very jolly mood.
Susan seemed really fascinated by Giulio's and its denizens. Her infrequent excursions into Manhattan are confined to Midtown, Broadway, and the East Side, and she probably hasn't been down in the old ethnic neighbourhoods since my company gave a party in Chinatown five years ago. But if I had thought she would enjoy something like this, I would have taken her to Little Italy, or Chinatown or Spanish Harlem or any place other than The Creek. But I didn't know. Then again, neither did she.
Well, a few events of note had transpired since the night I'd sunk the Paumanok that may be worth mentioning. Edward and Carolyn had come home from the southern climes. Edward with a deep tan, and Carolyn with a deeper understanding of the Cuban people, and also with a box of Monto Cristo number fours. So the Sutter clan was reunited for about a week before Labor Day, and we had a good time despite the fact that the Paumanok was at the bottom of the bay and the East Hampton house was sold. Incidentally, I hadn't told Susan that I'd sunk the boat and would not have mentioned it, except that when Edward and Carolyn came home, they wanted to go sailing. So I sat everyone down and said, "The government slapped a tax-seizure sign on the boat, and it looked so obscene, I took her into the middle of the bay and sunk her." I added, "I think her mast is still above water, and if it is, you can see seven signal flags that say 'Fuck you'. Well, I hope she's not a hazard to navigation, but if she is, the Coast Guard will take care of it."
There was a minute of stunned silence, then Edward said, "Good for you." Carolyn seconded that. Susan said nothing.
Anyway, we took some day trips, saw a matinee in Manhattan, swam at Fox Point, and even played golf one day at The Creek, though I had the distinct feeling some people were snubbing us. I resigned from the club the next day – not because, as Groucho Marx, a onetime Gold Coast resident, once said, "I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member" – but because if I belonged there, then I belonged there. And I didn't, so I don't. Capisce? Anyway, the day after Labor Day, Susan decided to visit her parental units in Hilton Head, leaving Carolyn, Edward, and me to finish out the last days of school vacation by ourselves. It was a nice few days, and we spent them mostly at Stanhope Hall, riding and walking the property. Carolyn got the idea to do a photographic essay of the estate, and that took two days with me supplying the history and the captions for the pictures as best I could. Carolyn is not the sentimental type, but I think she knew that might be one of the last times that such a thing would be possible. One night, Edward, Carolyn, and I camped out in the mansion with sleeping bags, and we had a picnic on the marble floor of the dining room by candlelight.
Sitting around the candles, deep into a bottle of wine, Carolyn said to me, "You've changed, Dad."
"Have I? How?"
She thought a moment, then replied, "You're more… grown-up." She smiled. I smiled in return. "And my voice is changing." I knew what she meant, of course. The last few months had been a time of challenge and change, and so I suppose it had been good for my character. Most American men of the upper middle classes never really grow up unless they are fortunate enough to go to war or go through a bankruptcy or divorce or other major adversity. So this was the summer I got hair on my balls, and it felt good and bad at the same time. I asked Edward, "Do you think your old man has changed?"
Edward, who is not usually tuned in to the subtleties of human behaviour, replied, "Yeah, I guess." He added, "Can you change back?" "No. There's no going back."
A few days after that, I rented a van and drove the kids to school. We went first to Sarah Lawrence, and Edward was nervous about starting college, but I assured him that the liberal arts curriculum he was taking was similar to the one I took at Yale, and that I slept for four years. Thus assured, he strode confidently into the formerly all-girls school, his hair combed for the first time since his baptism, and his body smelling of some awful lotion. Carolyn and I drove alone to Yale, and I always enjoy going back to my alma mater, as my college memories are good despite the turmoil of those years in the mid-sixties. Carolyn said to me on the way to New Haven, "Are you legally separated?"
"No. Your mother just went to visit her parents."
"It's sort of a trial separation?"
"No."
"Why are you sleeping in separate rooms?"
"Because we don't want to sleep in separate cities. End of conversation." So I drove her up to Yale. As a sophomore this year, Carolyn enters what we call a 'college', actually a dorm where she will spend the next three years. She is, in fact, in my old college, Jonathan Edwards. J E, as we call it, is a beautiful, old Gothic building with arches, climbing ivy, and turrets, situated around a large quadrangle. It is, in fact, the greatest place on the face of this earth, and I wished I was staying and not leaving. Anyway, I helped her unload half a vanful of clothes and electronics, which barely fit in her room. It was a nice suite like my old place down the hall, with oak panelling and a fireplace in the living room. I met her roommate, a tall, blonde young woman from Texas named Halsey, and I wondered if I shouldn't go back to Jonathan Edwards to do a little more undergraduate work. You're never too old to learn.
But I digress. Carolyn and I walked down to Liggett's Drugstore, which is sort of a tradition, and with a few hundred other Yalies and parents, we stocked up on notions and sundries. We stowed the Liggett's bags in the van, then walked the few blocks to York Street, "to the tables down at Mory's, to the place where Louie dwells." Don't ask me what that means.
Mory's is a private club, and I've kept my membership for this past quarter of a century, though I doubt if I get there once a year. But though I may have resigned from The Creek, and may eventually resign from my job and my marriage and from life in general, I will never resign from Mory's, for to do that is to sever the ties to myself, to the John Sutter whom I used to know and like. I may indeed be a poor little lamb who has lost his way, but that night I was home again.
So Carolyn and I had dinner at Mory's along with a hundred other families, many of whom I noticed were missing one or the other spouse. Carolyn is not a member of Mory's, and may never be, as she discriminates against private clubs. Nevertheless, I regaled her with Mory stories, and she sat there and smiled at me, sometimes amused, sometimes bored, and once or twice disapproving. Well, yesterday's high jinks are today's insensitive behaviour, I suppose, and maybe the reverse is also true. But it was a nice dinner, an exquisite few hours between father and daughter.
The oak tabletops at Mory's have been carved with thousands of names and initials, and though we couldn't find mine without clearing off someone else's dinner, I did produce a sharp pocketknife for Carolyn, who carved away while I went around the dining room and said hello to a few old school chums. I walked Carolyn back to Jonathan Edwards, we kissed good-bye, and I got in the van, opting for the two-hour drive back to Long Island rather than prolonging the nostalgia trip, which could easily have turned from pleasant to maudlin. Regarding my legal career, my association with Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds seemed to be rather vague, perhaps even tentative. I put myself on half salary, which is, I think, fair since I spend half the week in the Locust Valley office, albeit with my door closed and the phone turned off. But I feel a sense of responsibility to my old clients, and I'm trying to put their affairs in some semblance of order and to parcel them out to other attorneys in the firm. As for my Wall Street business, that's completely gone. My Wall Street clients would fire an attorney after two missed phone calls, so my sense of loyalty and responsibility toward the yellow-tie guys is not deep and not reciprocal. But I have to settle the question of my status with the firm and I suppose if I ever show up at the Wall Street office, I could discuss this with the senior partners.