tricks. His tiny fingers with their miniature nails grasped my thumb and held fast, and it made me giddy, it was so sweet.
The christening was at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on the Upper East Side, which many of its members like to call the Church of the Overly Dressed. Richard was a regular communicant. Heâd been a cradle Episcopalian, lapsed like so many of us in his teens, when we had all the answers and knew we would live forever, but RJâs birth had changed that. It wasnât Saul on the road to Damascus, he didnât talk about Jesus or faith or anything, but it was important to him. Anyway, it was lovely. Richardâs parents and brother came from Chicago, and Dinahâs family came down from Canaan Hamlet. When our part of the service arrived, Stewie Brumder and I went up to the font with Dinah and Richard. I carried the baby, who wore the same long, lace Wainwright family christening dress RJ had worn, still smelling of mothballs. When the priest took the baby in the crook of his arm and began to work his voodoo with the holy water, Nicholas opened his eyes and looked startled, but too interested to cry. My grandmother always said babies should cry at christenings, itâs the sound of the devil leaving them. But she also said that a broken mirror meant seven years of bad luck, and referred to an unforeseen difficulty as âthe nigger in the woodpile.â Nicholas was angelic, sunny, and easy, except when he wasnât.
Dinah was besotted with him. She had nursed RJ for a month or two, but then sheâd gone back to work and left him with a Haitian nanny. She nursed Nicky for almost a year. There was a great deal of talk in those years about feeding on a schedule or ânursing on demand.â I donât remember how RJ was raised, but Nicky was definitely on demand. Dinah didnât see any point in thwarting him in anything.
RJ was having a hardish time adjusting to the new arrival. On one evening visit I rode up in the elevator with the plumber; RJ had flushed an orange down the toilet. His first words to his brother, when he came home from the hospital, were âHere, babyâeat soap.â He was a sturdy three-year-old by then.
After Nicky was born, Dinahâs Sunday salons changed. She started including families, and the event evolved into a cheerful madhouse of little boys rampaging through the living room while more and more of the grown-ups debated whether television, even Sesame Street, was a blessing or a curse, and how young a child could be sent to day care, and fewer and fewer wanted to talk about the new production of Uncle Vanya or whether Ford was right to have pardoned Nixon. Nicky started walking, then talking; RJ started preschool.
And then there was the spring morning I was walking to work and came upon Richard Wainwright leaving the Cabot Hotel with a young woman who was definitely not his wife.
It could have been a power breakfast, but why at a tiny hotel on a side street? And the girl wasnât dressed for business; she was wearing a long skirt and flat sandals and a newsboy cap which, I must say, became her. And there was the way they kissed good-bye as Richard put her into a cab.
What a bite of poisoned apple. As the cab pulled away, Richard straightened, smiling, and looked at the spring sky and the flowering trees on the street, scattering white petals on the sidewalk like a shower of warm snow. For a moment he was a man on top of the world. Then he saw me standing across the street, thunderstruck.
What would you do?
There was no right answer. No one is thanked for bearing news like that. What did I know about what went on in that marriage? And of course there was my own situation. I was in no position to tell tales.
But. I was Dinahâs friend. How could it be right for me to know something so important about her life that she didnât know? What did the office of friendship require in this case?
I went to visit Dinah and the
The christening was at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on the Upper East Side, which many of its members like to call the Church of the Overly Dressed. Richard was a regular communicant. Heâd been a cradle Episcopalian, lapsed like so many of us in his teens, when we had all the answers and knew we would live forever, but RJâs birth had changed that. It wasnât Saul on the road to Damascus, he didnât talk about Jesus or faith or anything, but it was important to him. Anyway, it was lovely. Richardâs parents and brother came from Chicago, and Dinahâs family came down from Canaan Hamlet. When our part of the service arrived, Stewie Brumder and I went up to the font with Dinah and Richard. I carried the baby, who wore the same long, lace Wainwright family christening dress RJ had worn, still smelling of mothballs. When the priest took the baby in the crook of his arm and began to work his voodoo with the holy water, Nicholas opened his eyes and looked startled, but too interested to cry. My grandmother always said babies should cry at christenings, itâs the sound of the devil leaving them. But she also said that a broken mirror meant seven years of bad luck, and referred to an unforeseen difficulty as âthe nigger in the woodpile.â Nicholas was angelic, sunny, and easy, except when he wasnât.
Dinah was besotted with him. She had nursed RJ for a month or two, but then sheâd gone back to work and left him with a Haitian nanny. She nursed Nicky for almost a year. There was a great deal of talk in those years about feeding on a schedule or ânursing on demand.â I donât remember how RJ was raised, but Nicky was definitely on demand. Dinah didnât see any point in thwarting him in anything.
RJ was having a hardish time adjusting to the new arrival. On one evening visit I rode up in the elevator with the plumber; RJ had flushed an orange down the toilet. His first words to his brother, when he came home from the hospital, were âHere, babyâeat soap.â He was a sturdy three-year-old by then.
After Nicky was born, Dinahâs Sunday salons changed. She started including families, and the event evolved into a cheerful madhouse of little boys rampaging through the living room while more and more of the grown-ups debated whether television, even Sesame Street, was a blessing or a curse, and how young a child could be sent to day care, and fewer and fewer wanted to talk about the new production of Uncle Vanya or whether Ford was right to have pardoned Nixon. Nicky started walking, then talking; RJ started preschool.
And then there was the spring morning I was walking to work and came upon Richard Wainwright leaving the Cabot Hotel with a young woman who was definitely not his wife.
It could have been a power breakfast, but why at a tiny hotel on a side street? And the girl wasnât dressed for business; she was wearing a long skirt and flat sandals and a newsboy cap which, I must say, became her. And there was the way they kissed good-bye as Richard put her into a cab.
What a bite of poisoned apple. As the cab pulled away, Richard straightened, smiling, and looked at the spring sky and the flowering trees on the street, scattering white petals on the sidewalk like a shower of warm snow. For a moment he was a man on top of the world. Then he saw me standing across the street, thunderstruck.
What would you do?
There was no right answer. No one is thanked for bearing news like that. What did I know about what went on in that marriage? And of course there was my own situation. I was in no position to tell tales.
But. I was Dinahâs friend. How could it be right for me to know something so important about her life that she didnât know? What did the office of friendship require in this case?
I went to visit Dinah and the
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