Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

by Kathleen Rooney

  We had a cook, too, a few nights a week, to help me then while I was freelancing. She made hearty food: roasted chicken and creamed potatoes, oysters and grilled tomatoes, squash or scrambled eggs or scrod.

  For the second and last time in my life I step up the three steps and stand in the doorway where I last stood almost thirty years ago. Whether and how the place has changed I can’t say; I have no memory of the entrance. Despite my damned good health, I do take note of things like steps—and hips, and trips, and falls—differently now than I did in my fifties. Thirty years! I was in sorry shape then, but I was younger, younger, younger.

  Alone this time, free from entanglements, I can pay closer attention, see the place for the institution it is and not just for what it means to me. So many ubiquitous dishes were invented here: eggs Benedict, Manhattan clam chowder, chicken á la King, and baked Alaska. The Delmonico’s that served Max and me our final meal together, Oscar’s Delmonico’s, closed in 1977, but the restaurant reopened under new management in 1981. The posted menu appears to include all the classics.

  Not that it matters. I’m getting a steak. A make-up steak. A steak to compensate for the spoiling of my last one by the one true love of my entire life.

  I place a gloved hand on the brass handle of the wooden door and step inside. Into a crush of people that makes the restaurant lobby resemble a rush-hour subway car.

  The harried woman at the hostess stand greets me with shell-shocked solicitude.

  “Dinner for one, please,” I say, raising my voice above the clamor.

  “Do you have a reservation?”

  “Actually,” I say, “I haven’t a reservation. This is a spontaneous undertaking. One last great adventure for 1984.”

  “I see,” says the hostess. “I’m afraid we’re quite packed.”

  “So I noticed,” I say. “Very good to see such a good business doing good business.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she says, eyes down, scanning her list.

  Mild dismay—I feel it, for not having thought of this: a popular restaurant on a massive holiday. Of course they’re overrun. But I also feel as though I should be able to talk my way in. I’ve rarely been unable to persuade.

  “Surely,” I say, “you might have an out-of-the-way space for an out-of-the-way old lady? A crate or two in the wine cellar, perhaps? It can be tiny. Just big enough to hold a steak.”

  “That seems deeply unlikely, ma’am,” she says, theatrically turning the paper over to reveal a back that’s as scrawled with names as the front.

  “I had very much hoped—” I say, then pause, brought up short by the complexities of what I had hoped. Clarity! Focus! The keys to any successful appeal! But my message is undercut by all the things I’ve wanted, all the people I’ve been.

  “I hate to tell you, ma’am, but it cannot be done,” says the hostess. “We have a wait of three hours at this point, and even then there’s no guarantee.”

  “I ate here once before,” I say. “It was terrible. The circumstances were terrible. The food was superb. Or I imagine it was. It’s difficult for me to say. That’s why I’ve come back. I was here with my husband. We’d just divorced. Now he’s dead. This all happened thirty years ago. The divorce, that is. And the dinner. In that case it was lunch, actually.”

  The hostess’s face is shading toward desperation; her gaze has grown distant, measuring the crowd as it fills in behind me. One small delay occasioned by a senile woman could breed a calamitous chain reaction on a night like tonight. “Ma’am,” she says, “I’m really very sorry. I hope you’ll visit us again soon.”

  I don’t know what else to say—a formerly rare state of affairs, happening these days with increasing frequency. Boxfish in her prime—late twenties, this young woman’s age—would be seated by now, probably drinking on the house. Times have changed. But not times only.

  “Well,” I say. “Thank you for trying.”

  When I turn, I am facing the face of a woman about Johnny’s age, dark hair with some stately gray at the temples. Her expression says she’s overheard our exchange, witnessed my failure, and I can guess what she’s thinking: I hope I die before I’m old and pathetic. Would that I had, madam! Would that I had.

  I feel a rush of heat under the skin of my cheeks, beneath my ridiculous mink, and I turn away, lest these people see me cry. Spoiling everyone’s fun. Behavior I’d expect from Olive, frankly. I work my way back toward the vestibule, stopping for a moment to collect myself, using the glass front of a bookcase to reapply Orange Fire to the mouth of my spectral reflection. Through the front doors, between the twin Pompeiian columns, I can see steam rising from grates and tailpipes in the all-but-unpeopled five-way intersection. I could take a cab back to Grimaldi, I suppose. Or find a hot dog stand. On New Year’s Eve. Somewhere in Lower Manhattan.

  A do over. Max’s phrase—a bit vulgar, but charming, like the man himself. Julia was his: Julia who buried him, whom my son will shortly bury in turn. Apparently marriage can be done over, while a steak dinner cannot. And yet steaks are often overdone, which seems like a significant paradox. I have overdone a few in my time, being no master chef. I have overdone any number of things. Don’t overdo it, Ma, Gianino always cautions. But so much of my life was overdoing. Overdoing it at raging dos, quite often. Creating big to-dos, not always on purpose. Doing my best, over and over. Much ado over nothing. In Shakespeare’s day, Helen learned during our brief career as thespians, “nothing” was pronounced the same as “noting,” which, it’s worth noting, vastly increased its punning potential. How sour sweet music is, when time is broke and no proportion kept! With nothing shall I be pleased till I be eased with being nothing.

  In what time remains, very little that is broken can be fixed.

  A light hand on my shoulder: I barely feel it through my heavy pelt. It’s the dark-haired woman again.

  “Forgive me,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to spy, but I couldn’t help overhearing. That’s a shame about them not having room. But, if it’s not too brazen, my family is about to be seated for our 8:30 reservation, and we have an extra spot.”

  I track her gesturing hand to a party of four others: a bespectacled man I take to be her husband, another middle-aged couple, and a copper-haired girl of maybe ten or eleven. “My goodness,” I say, “That’s very kind, but you can’t really want an elderly stranger to impose on your holiday.”

  “Oh, but we can, though. My name is Kathy,” she says, and she extends a hand to shake.

  “Mine is Lillian.”

  “Well, there you have it. We’re not strangers anymore.”

  The young girl wanders over, friendly and quizzical. “Listen,” Kathy says, “I should probably mention right away—just because I’ll be thinking about it all night—that my mother was supposed to join us tonight. Penny’s grandmother,” she says, squeezing the girl’s shoulder. “But she’s in the hospital with pneumonia and couldn’t make it.”

  “Oh no,” I say. “I’m very sorry to hear that. How is she doing?”

  “Well, at her age there’s no such thing as a minor illness, but the doctor says she’ll be fine. It’s sad, though, to be away from people you love on New Year’s Eve. I hope you don’t think it’s strange that I asked you to join us.”

  “Not at all. It does seem a waste to throw away a choice seat at Delmonico’s and a chance to get to know one another,” I say. “You’ve convinced me. It’s an honor to join.”

  I check my coat, and the hostess leads us back to a table set for six. She rests a hand on my back as she hands me my menu, her eyes bright with something: sadness, gladness, relief, apology. I smile at her.

  As we sit, I admire Kathy’s grace: the way her invitation was laced not with pity, but with sympathy, and maybe also with need. Kathy introduces me to her husband and to the other couple, her brother and his wife. She encourages me to sit between her and Penny, who shakes my hand with bright politeness.

  “What brings you to Delmonico’s tonight?” says Kathy.


  “This is my mulligan. A chance to try again and get it right, since the last time I was here, I didn’t quite.”

  “Oh dear,” says Kathy. “Nothing too serious, I hope?”

  “No, no,” I say, not wanting to burden her. “Just a mistaken steak order.”

  The waiter comes to take our drink requests, and I ask for water, no ice, as it’s already cold enough. “You’ll have some wine with us, won’t you, Lillian?” says Kathy.

  “Only the tiniest drop. I strolled down here, and it’s important to stay hydrated.”

  “I wish my mother understood that. She must be about your age, and she’s forever dehydrating.”

  “You’re supposed to drink eight glasses of water a day,” says Penny. “We learned that in school.”

  “My granddaughter Lily told me that same fact last week when she was visiting for Christmas,” I say. “I think you’d like her.”

  “If she’s like you,” says Penny, “I think I probably would.”

  “Medium rare,” I say, when the waiter comes back to ask what we want for dinner, satisfied with my accuracy this time.

  When the food arrives, I’ve almost forgotten that I’ve just made the acquaintance of Kathy and her family. They live in Brooklyn, but they love the whole city and regret its decline in the same way that I do.

  “But we’re not going to leave,” says Kathy. “For one thing, the pleasant people have to stay and balance out the cruel ones. And for another, it can’t keep on this way.”

  “This Subway Vigilante,” says her husband. “He’s got to be New York City hitting bottom. We’ve held out this long. It’s going to go back up from here.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I say. “And I think you are. I read an article the other day. About gentrification, of all things.”

  “I read that, too,” says Kathy. “What’s in a name?”

  “That’s from Romeo and Juliet,” says Penny.

  “Right you are, Penny,” I say. “Longtime residents call the neighborhood the Lower East Side. But real estate agents are renaming it the East Village to draw in new renters, so they won’t be afraid of the rough reputation. So says the article.”

  “The part that floored me,” says Kathy, “was when they quoted that one woman in her sixties who’d been there forever: $115 a month in a rent-controlled apartment. She said these young kids who moved in upstairs from her pay $700 a month for the same amount of space!”

  “Ridiculous,” says her husband. “But of course those kids call it the East Village, not the Lower East Side.”

  “So much is in a name,” says Penny.

  We chat about the things New Yorkers chat about—the constant low-grade lunacy of life in the city—but I am surprised to find, and I think they are too, that our stories emphasize the serendipitous, even the magical. Our tone is that of conspirators, as though we are afraid to be overheard speaking fondly of a city that conventional wisdom declares beyond hope. My long walks, I discover, have provided a rich reserve of encounters with odd, enthusiastic, decent people; I hadn’t realized that I have these stories until someone asked to hear them.

  The steak arrives and does not disappoint.

  “Penny,” I say. “I haven’t heard that name in a while. It’s lovely.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Boxfish,” says Penny, with such manners. “It’s short for Penelope.”

  “Oh, please, you may call me Lillian.”

  Penny looks to her mother for her approval, and Kathy nods. “Thank you, Lillian,” says Penny.

  “The nickname Penny makes me wonder,” I say. “Maybe you’ve wondered too: Why doesn’t anyone call their kids Nickel or Dime?”

  Penny narrows her eyes, not sure if this is a joke or a trick, wanting to keep the point in play. “Well,” she says, “what names would those be nicknames for?”

  “Good question. And you’re quite right. Nickelope and Dimelope never became as popular as Penelope did.”

  “You’re funny, Lillian,” says Penny, laughing, and her mother laughs, too.

  “I used to be,” I say. “You know what else I wonder? I wonder whether anyone will know what a penny was when you get to be my age.”

  “Gosh,” says Penny, very serious, very adult. “You’re how old now, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Eighty-four,” I say, lying as always.

  “And I’m eleven,” she says, sending her blue-eyed gaze to the ceiling as she mentally calculates. “So that’s seventy-three years from now, right?”

  “Correct, Penny,” I say. “You are excellent at math.”

  “Her father’s an accountant,” says Kathy, winking at her husband.

  “So that will be the year 2057,” says Penny.

  “Good grief,” says Kathy. “That sounds so far away!”

  “Lillian,” says Penny, “I hope it doesn’t make you too sad, but I have to say that I do not think anyone will be using pennies at that time. It won’t be cost-effective.”

  “They just stopped making them out of copper,” Kathy’s brother says. “They’re using cheaper metal now. Zinc, I think.”

  “I predict that you are right, Penny,” I say. “Though it does make me a tiny bit sad.”

  “Well,” says Penny, “I have a penny collection at home, actually. And I think that if I know anything about myself, I will still have it even then. So it’s not like pennies will be completely gone.”

  “That makes me feel better, Penny,” I say, because it does.

  I’ve been talking, I realize, and have made little headway on my steak. For a moment I fear I’ve once again let circumstances prevent Delmonico’s from serving me a perfect meal. But it’s still warm and still delicious, and I dispatch it with dispatch. I drink the last of my wine with the last of my meat, and when Kathy’s husband looks at me and reaches for the bottle, I shake my head no and mouth my thanks. Not because I don’t want more, but because I do.

  I set down my water glass and feel overcome by something akin to Stendhal syndrome: a dizzy head, a thumping heart. I’m so touched by their kindness. Although a long series of dim and darker days has tempted me to conclude that I inhabit a world on an ever-sewerward skid, here they are. Penny and her mother are just too much. I feel almost faint.

  I excuse myself. To powder my nose, I tell them.

  But I take my things with me.

  I do stop in the lavatory, but when I am done, I do not return to the table. I go to the front, catch our waiter, and settle up. I pay the bill for the entire party on my Carte Blanche, and I leave without saying good-bye, because I’m not sure I can hold myself together, I’m so happy.

  Back on William Street, I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to sleep because I want to be awake for this feeling—awake to see what happens next.

  This, I am reminded, is why I love walking in the city, taking to the streets in pursuit of some spontaneous and near-arbitrary objective. If one knocks oneself out of one’s routine—and in so doing knocks others gently out of theirs—then one can now and again create these momentary opportunities to be better than one is.

  It’s about 9:30.

  When I first came to the city there were dirigible masts and chromium spires rising in every direction, pointing up toward the vault of heaven, ahead toward the world to come. I pictured them clung with honeysuckle and morning glory, eighty stories up. Everything was so pretty then.

  Those spires were dreams before they were spires, and who knows what dreams still shelter behind the distrustful eyes I meet on these streets? That makes me think of my friend Wendy and her enormous Nikon, hunting Madison Square Park for signs of that kind of beauty. Wendy, whose New Year’s Eve party is probably just now getting underway.

  I figure Chelsea is a hair under three miles away as the crow flies, but I’ve never been inclined to let crows plot my routes.

  15

  Nature in the Roar

  Even before our new baby was born, I became, for a time, an expert on crying.

&
nbsp; I sat trying not to on Friday, January 16, 1942, vastly pregnant on the thirteenth floor of R.H. Macy’s. It was my farewell party.

  My office had already been emptied, and I’d be taking the last box of my things home with me that evening. Everyone from institutional advertising had turned out to say good-bye.

  “Lilies for our beloved Lily,” said evil Olive, my grinning enemy, presenting me with a bouquet of Orientals and fairly licking her chops at the prospect of my permanent departure.

  I’d been sensitive to smells for the past eight months, but the mawkish white scent of the freckled pink flowers was especially nauseating. The obscene open blooms—flung wide, stamens dangling—served to make the room feel even closer than it already did, more wintry, the windows more emphatically locked. A gift of lilies was an aggressive move, always. Even cloddish Olive understood that.

  “You really put a lot of thought into these, Olive. Thank you,” I said, because it was mannerly and because it was true. The flowers were on the nose: odiously odorous and overly apt. Funereal, really.

  “You look a vision, Lillian,” she said. “Like a flower yourself.”

  What cloying falsehood. I looked absurd.

  Still, I looked her in the eye and said, “How sweet of you, Olive. I have the women’s department of R.H. Macy’s to thank for making this particular silhouette possible.”

  I had always liked dressing—shopping and matching, creating a style. In the early 1940s, though, the fashions for women expecting a blessed event did not look or feel so blessed. Made to conceal one’s impending maternity, they seemed designed to induce both embarrassment and regret. A popular maternity frock was called, with all its associations of blood and violence, the Butcher Boy: an unflattering mess with a flapping front of rayon crepe that the ads said would keep your little bundle-to-be as secret as a rabbit in a magician’s hat. How unmagical. I saw it billed elsewhere as “a pretty holiday disguise.” Why disguise it? It was a fact of life.