These days when they talk on the phone, she can find herself overwhelmed by the tenderness in his voice. Part of her wants to ask“Where have you kidnapped my father?” but mostly she’s grateful that old age and her mother’s passing have left James Gardner less bitter, more forgiving. It’s what she’s counting on now.
“Daddy,” she says. “I screwed up. I really screwed up.”
“What’s the matter?”
“You’ll be a granddad is all,” Lucy says. She’s tried to be strong in her solitude, but her father’s tenderness has surprised the toughness out of her. All the hope she had for a family with Jaryk, unraveling. The grief she’s been holding at bay threatens to come out, and her voice shakes as she says, “So that’s my news.”
“Oh, Lucy,” he says.
“I’ve been thinking that if I can’t make it in the city on my own, I might move back to Mebane, just for a while.”
“Say when,” her father says. “I’ll come up there and drive you back home.”
He doesn’t ask any questions about how it happened, and for this she is grateful. Maybe Timothy has prepped him, but she doesn’t think so. He’s coming into his own, her old man.
She’s halfway settled on Mebane. Most mornings, rising out of bed, then hugging the handrails on the subway to City Hall, she can’t imagine how she would manage here as a single mother, though there are moments, when she gazes at all the boats on the Hudson, or when she steps into the cathedral of Grand Central, that she also can’t imagine forsaking the city’s great rush.
She’s had to ask Miles Norton about maternity leave. On her lunch break, she followed him out of the office to his favorite hot-dog stand. She waited in line with him, offering office talk, and right before he was about to order his dog, she said, “Miles, I’ll need to take some time this winter away from work.”
The request put him off his routine, which she’d believed would work in her favor. “Around Februrary. That’s when I’m expecting my child.”
The hot-dog man slapped Miles’s order in his hands, no questions asked.
“Oh, my,” said Miles, nearly forgetting to pay. “This is a new one for me.”
The next week he alternates between leniency and strictness, offering first to help with some of her clients, telling her she can take an extra break in the mornings, then walking into her office and announcing he must keep fair standards for all and how many clients has she seen today?
“Oh, I believe I’m still the most popular counselor,” Lucy informs him.
“I’m just worried you won’t have time for both mothering and work,” Miles counters. Just another thing she now has to worry about, getting the boot at her job.
All the talk in the office has Jonas perked up. She agrees to meet him for dinner after work. It’s his turn to choose, and he gives her an address on the Upper East Side.
“Got the best catfish in town,” he says.
A dusty Creole bar is what she imagines, though it’s an apartment building with an Old World inscription—The Predwin—and prewar architecture well beyond her means. Jonas greets her as she arrives.
“Why do I not think this is a restaurant?”
“Just wait till you see the white-tablecloth service,” Jonas says. He’s always seemed a carelessly careful dresser, but tonight his wardrobe draws a smile from her. He’s got on a vintage vest and a linen shirt and ankle-high boots that match his silver belt buckle. His hair’s slicked back, and he looks on the whole as if he might be about to perform a magic trick.
A doorman in a navy-blue suit greets him as “Mr. Jonas, sir.”
Jonas high-fives the doorman and says, “Right this way, madam.”
Oh, he’s a charmer, Lucy thinks, as she allows herself to be steered into the elevator of the apartment building, whose antique door Jonas now gently slides shut. Close in the elevator with him, she smells his cologne, which has a whiff of forest about it, an element so outside of the city that she appreciates it.
“Mandy’s been acting up lately,” Jonas says of the elevator. “Named after the first lady who lived in this building.” He presses the Up button half a dozen times before finally they begin their ascent. It’s a crowded space, but not so crowded that Jonas has to press up against her, which he does, sliding his hand a little too close to her.
She weighs his intentions as they climb to the top. In the beginning of their friendship, she’d announced she wasn’t available, that there was a significant someone, though perhaps, without any evidence forthcoming, he’s been wooed to think otherwise.
That may well be the case, she thinks, following him into an apartment that’s at least twice the size of hers, where’s he’s folded a white tablecloth over his dining table, arranged a yellow rose in a glass jar. and opened a bottle of wine. The ceilings, too, are several feet higher than what her rent could afford.
“You sure you don’t have a second job, Jonas?”
“Before I moved up here, I started getting some money from my grandpa. Gets me a decent-sized place.”
“Grandpa Goldshoes?”
“I’m still working, all right?”
“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
“Before you say anything, know that I love to cook and rarely get the chance. In this city, we’re always eating food some half-mad person slapped on a plate. I just thought we could relax, slow down, and eat a meal at the pace of home. And hold on—” he says, rushing to the oven—“I have baked-from-scratch cornbread.”
The bread stirs from the heat. She inhales the buttery smell that forms its core. “Okay,” she says. “But you’re going to let me return this favor.”
He’s made catfish in a style he learned from New Orleans. A few spices she can’t name and tarragon. Nola is where he fell in love with music, Jonas says, pointing to his guitar, which shares space in the corner with his shelf of LPs. Records are stacked on the floor, books arranged in formidable towers. Little Russian dolls line the sill of an unusable fireplace. He may be a nomad at heart, she thinks, but Jonas loves to nest.
“I know, I’m a little messy,” he says, serving her another piece of cornbread.
She butters it thoroughly before eating it with relish. Now that the nausea isn’t prominent, she can enjoy the taste of food again, and she is often hungry. Maybe Jonas has noticed her extra snack breaks throughout the work day and the way she’s wolfed his meal down this night, but she doubts it—he’s got his nose in his food as much as she does. Still, she’s decided she wants to tell him about her pregnancy. Miles wouldn’t have leaked the news—he doesn’t have a gossipy bone in him—but it’s only a matter of time before people see her showing. Anyway, when she tells him, it’ll be a kind of boundary between them. If his intentions are more than being just friends, it’ll put a stop to it. Something about this makes her feel a loss—she doesn’t, after all, want to lose the gentle flirtation they’ve enjoyed—but she can’t help telling him the truth.
“It’s very sweet, you making this whole meal, putting on the white tablecloth. All of it,” she says.
“Madam, it’s my pleasure.”
“Who taught you to play that thing?” she asks, pointing to the guitar.
He tells her he followed a minstrel in New Orleans. She likes the way he says “minstrel.”
“I spent my youth following him into bars,” Jonas says. “I don’t mind playing you one of his tunes.”
Lucy was born with the gift of perfect pitch, and she can hear the same in Jonas’s voice when he sings to his strum. First he sings her an Appalachian tune about an orphan girl, his voice suited to the notes of mourning, and then he sings her a boot stomper about moonshining on the mountain.
They head up a flight to the roof, from which she can see the neighborhood changing. Jonas’s building is prewar, but around her the other old residences are being felled.
In every direction, bulldozers are awaiting orders. Large dugouts of land prepare for skyscrapers that will soon house hundreds of tenants. Mayor Lindsay has talked about the city transforming itself, becoming again the jewel of finance, manufacturing, and even art, but the only art she can imagine flourishing here are the graffitied murals, ubiquitous and as diverse as the city itself. The sun slides low over the city, and for a moment even the wasteland of the city, the abandoned houses, the plots saved for skyscrapers, all of it is beautiful. She leans against the railing and summons her courage.
“Jonas,” she says. “I’m so glad we met. We have a good time, the two of us, don’t we?”
“Lucy, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he says. He moves too close to her again, as if he’s winding up for a kiss.
“I go first,” Lucy interrupts. “Jonas, I’m seventeen weeks. Pregnant.”
“Oh.” He takes a turn around the roof, stepping gingerly over the antennae and the lines tying into the water tank. “Is it your special friend, the one who doesn’t live here?”
“Yes,” Lucy sighs. “It’s him.”
She can see him searching for his gallantry, but the news has caught him unawares. If he suspected something, he didn’t put it all together, she’s sure of that now. He looks defeated, and that’s no surprise: men are so easily wounded. Jonas is a good man, and she has no wish to hurt him. She kisses him on the cheek, refuses to linger.
“Good night.”
She walks herself down to the elevator, but it won’t go on her command. A light’s on in the vestibule, but she can’t tell what it means. Jonas has come down after her, slips in. He has minty breath, like Mr. Pal.
“Mandy doesn’t like quick goodbyes,” Jonas says, seeming like he’s got on right again, seeming like he’s aiming for overtime. He slams the elevator cage shut, and they descend.
Walking her to the train, he says, “Lucy, I’m no fair-weather friend. I’m no fair-weather anything.”
“I know that, Jonas.”
“What I mean is that I can be a support to you and your baby. I’m just prideful is all—sometimes get a temper about it. I just want to know if we’re playing the same song. I can really help you, Lucy.”
It’s been a night she wishes to remember for its sweetness. She doesn’t want to push him into any confessions he might later regret, though still—still—it is good to be desired so recklessly.
“I’ll see you at the office tomorrow,” she says.
* * *
………………
Alone in her apartment, she goes through her mail. It has always given her comfort, the sorting of wanted and unwanted things. At the bottom of her pile, she finds a package from her dad. It’s The Little Prince, which he and Mama read to her as a little girl. A story about a boy, a flower, and a volcano. The inscription says: “Ole Tim and I would like to read this to beansprout, as it was read to you.” Those words make her feel like a child again. She will be looked after. Her baby will be looked after. It won’t be any ordinary family, but—Jaryk or no Jaryk—her little one will be loved.
Office Hours
new york—september 1972
He walks the streets feeling like a tourist. The long tail of Houston leading to the tenement buildings of the Lower East Side, which he’d admired for having preserved their immigrant history, feels as foreign now as the countryside of India had been at first. Delivery boys rush up the Bowery, and he sees the cycle rickshaws; at the supermarket he samples an heirloom tomato and thinks of the Pals’ garden. Women cross the streets in miniskirts; he remembers the village wives who balanced the harvest on their heads, their saris faded from the sun. He is still between worlds, unprepared for reinvention.
He arrived three days ago. Without a place to live, little left of his savings, he headed to Temple Beth Israel. Old Rabbi Samuel greeted him as if there’d never been a separation. Ten years in the temple’s employ, Jaryk had rarely sought the rabbi’s counsel, but now he did, asking where he might find a room to stay in for a while. The rabbi led him to the basement, where next to his beloved library was a study little bigger than Jaryk’s holding cell in the military hospital, but until he found another apartment it would have to do.
He spent most of his first day in the congregants’ chamber, attending to the bulbs that had burned out in the chandelier. The High Holidays would soon be upon them, and he wanted the hall to be filled with light. His first night he slept on the pews and was awoken in the early dawn by Rabbi Samuel’s hand.
“Morning to you and morning to me,” said the rabbi.
Before he left for India, Jaryk had begun to smell the age of Rabbi Samuel; as his employer settled into the pew, he could smell the sourness that reminded him of the next life.
“I wouldn’t mind hearing a good story,” the rabbi said. “Do you have one in you?”
“I feel it’s hard to put what I’ve experienced into a story.”
“Try,” said the rabbi.
Once there was a man from Warsaw…
Once there was a play in India…
Once there was an orphanage in a ghetto…
He didn’t know where to begin. Whether with Misha’s death or the taxi ride into the country with Mr. Pal; cycling toward Shantiniketan; his hours in the police hospital; grieving for Misha, alone; all the afternoons at Gopalpur, building the stage; the force of the rains; Neel’s face breaking into a smile; Lucy coming to visit him, trying her best to take him back home.
Once there was a man from Warsaw who loved a girl from Mebane…
The morning light had fallen onto the pews in a widening trapezoid. Rabbi Samuel had fallen asleep against Jaryk’s shoulder. He could smell the dab of perfume the rebetsin had once each morning put on the rabbi’s ear, which in her memory the rabbi now applies himself.
* * *
………………
His last night in India he ran as long as he was able. The Pals found him sleeping by the side of a road, a wanly lit lamppost marking his shape.
“They’ll be on the watch for you,” Mr. Pal said, dark shadows under his eyes, worry in his voice. “We have to get you out now.”
Even in the rush, he made the Pals stop at the estate so he could retrieve Misha’s ashes, but forgot his statue. Once again it became lost to the world. In the months after, he’ll imagine Neel returning to the Bose house, claiming it as rightfully his.
Afterwards, Mr. Pal instructed Jaryk to hide in the trunk, at least until they were closer to the city. He apologized profusely for the kerosene smell.
“Is it really necessary?” Jaryk asked.
“Well, you were the leader of a play that culminated in a government honcho being shot,” answered Mrs. Pal. “We’d prefer you to avoid any and all interrogations.”
“I promise I’ll drive slowly,” said Mr. Pal.
He squeezed himself into the trunk and lay huddled for what seemed like hours. At times the car would slow to a crawl, and he’d hear muffled shouts, his heart racing, but each time they’d start moving again.
Eventually they stopped closer to Calcutta, where he was brought into the backseat.
“I’m terribly sorry for that indignity,” Mr. Pal said. “But as we suspected there were several checkpoints along the way. Each time they were asking about a tall white foreigner. We, of course, feigned ignorance.”
They made it to the airport but all flights out were booked. No choice but to hunker down in the Pal estate, far enough off the thoroughfare. He worried about everyone’s safety and tried calling the professor, but there was no answer. Finally, on the second day, he reached Rohan, who explained that the professor had headed to Bangladesh and was going to be away for a while.
“But no worry,” Rohan said. “Professor soon come. He soon come. Many papers at Gopalpur.”
“What about your safety? What if t
hey come for you again?”
“No worry,” Rohan said. “Very many journalists. They won’t touch now.”
The press had invaded Gopalpur and its surroundings, so for the moment the villagers were safe. He told Rohan to pass on a message—that he was heading back to America first thing tomorrow. But he would never hear from the professor again. He would send letters to the university but receive no answer. Years later, cleaning up his mailbox, he’d find a flyer for a new play in India: It was to be about a blind king, and a sightless child was to play the lead role.
Once there was a blind king.
Once there was a blind boy who played a blind king.
He’d stay in touch with Neel, though. Two months after the performance he’d receive a letter: “Uncle, we’ve been given our permit to live here,” it began. All their hard work had turned into a claim to the land. Over the years, he’d keep up a correspondence, stuffing comic books into packages that traversed the oceans to end up in a village and later in the city as Neel grew older.
When it came time for him to catch his flight, he told the Pals he would write from America. He thanked them for their kindness. Mr. Pal sauntered out to the garden, bending gingerly to retrieve a handful of tomatoes from the vine. He was having a hard time of it, complaining about the ache in his knees, the pain in his lower back, when Mrs. Pal lifted her sari and helped him. All the while, they joked to each other in their secret language of love. Through a gap in the trees, the sun illumined them as they were, older and younger, incompletely suited, on the verge of some uncommon happiness.
The sight of the two of them in the garden would become his last memory of India.
* * *
………………
He wonders what Lucy now thinks of him. In India he dwelled on the play, the professor, and the children of Gopalpur, but now that he is here, she consumes his waking hours. At times he thinks it would be simple to walk to her apartment on the Lower East Side and say hello, but other times he cannot bear the thought of being turned away. A possibility that grows larger the longer he is gone.
A Play for the End of the World Page 25