~~~~~
I submit a short story to a New York literary magazine. The story is rejected, but the editor invites me to a writing workshop in her home. There is no charge for the workshop; it’s just something that she offers to a small select group of writers that she feels shows promise. Her apartment is up on One Hundred and First and Riverside Drive, in a neighborhood whose stone exteriors seem to glow under the streetlamps. Dylan wants to accompany me. He wanders off somewhere while I attend the workshop, assuring me that he’ll meet me back there in two hours time.
We gather in the living room, which has a European feel to it, cluttered in an artistic sort of way, lots of rich Persian carpets, and antique furniture, and shelves upon shelves of books and artifacts from travels. There are four of us in the workshop; a woman in her thirties who works in advertising and hopes to make a career change to writing; a man with one of those striking voices that projects so well it makes one imagine he must be in theatre, and who directs most of his conversation directly to the editor as a teacher’s pet might; and a retired gentleman with an easy and gracious manner who reminds me of my father. His stories are the best, in my opinion; he has lived an interesting but unassuming life, served in the war, worked various jobs: salesman, harbormaster, mechanic; he has raised a family. He has stories to tell, and he tells them simply and without the affectation and overt literary devices that the rest of us resort to. He jokes about his lack of writing credentials and education as compared to the rest of us, and his humility is endearing. When the workshop breaks up, and the others gather about the editor, the gentleman hangs back, and I hang back with him. I make a point of telling him that his writing was the best. It takes some work to convince him, but I know that I won’t be returning to this workshop, and I want him to know this.
“How was it?” Dylan asks as he leads me back to a place he spotted where we can grab a bite to eat. The evening is cool, and Dylan wears his leather jacket. I can smell the leather. I tell him about the editor, how she’s originally from All Souls, England, how she’s written her share of acclaimed books.
“That’s right up your alley. An English mentor, someone who can guide you.” I don’t have the heart to tell him just yet that I don’t plan on going back. I’ve done my share of writing workshops. I never feel at ease reading my work aloud, and can’t see the point of reading to other amateurs like myself. Writing workshops can be brutal, all the egos, the insecurities, the lousy advice.
I break the news to Dylan that Sinclair secured me an interview for a nanny position with the couple who own the brownstone where he lives. I’m a shoo-in for the job, Ivy-League educated, plus I can speak English, which none of the previous nannies could. The job is five days a week, and comes with a free apartment which is back-to-back with Sinclair’s, on the fourth floor. I’m free to eat meals with the family if I wish, which would save me on groceries, and the salary is two hundred dollars a week. I’m to look after their three-year-old son, Felix.
“You gave up Princeton to work as the hired help? That’s just rich.” Dylan needs another beer after hearing this news. We’re sitting in Le Petit Beurre, eating what else? A little bit of bread.
“You said yourself that I would need at least a couple thousand dollars to get my own place in the city, and we all know I haven’t got a penny to my name, but this is an opportunity for an instant apartment. It’s in a great neighborhood, with all the shops on Columbus Avenue, and the park a block away, and a café two doors down. It’s within walking distance of a ballet studio, and the Museum of Natural History.”
“I’d rather you stayed on longer with me, and got something more prestigious than that. Something in publishing maybe.”
“I don’t want to exhaust all my creativity and mental power editing other people’s books. I want to write my own books. I know if I can just have some time alone, if I can lock myself up in that little apartment, to go within myself, I can pull something great out of me.”
“Couldn’t you have just locked yourself away in your dorm back at Princeton, and pulled something great out of yourself?” Dylan says through a mouthful of chips.
I break the news to Dylan that my advisor in the English department did not like me. She took under wing only those writers who mirrored back her morbid vision of the world, those who wrote obsessive stories about the hopelessness of the human condition.
“I don’t think life is hopeless. I think it’s magical. And why wouldn’t I? I’ve had a happy life, with Mom and Dad, and you, the greatest brother in the world. Maybe I have nothing to write about. Literary novels always have unhappy endings. How did Tolstoy put it in the first line of Anna Karenina, ‘All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ All the books with happy endings are formulaic, like the romance novels. They’re not taken seriously, not that I’ve ever cared about being taken seriously.”
“Someone’s taking those books seriously. Mom is always talking about how her favorite author has made mega millions, and lives in some colossal pink mansion.” Dylan is referring to Barbara Cartland, whose novels Mom loves. “Well, don’t go looking for misery just to give yourself material for stories.”
“Why should I believe in tragedy? I’ve never seen any. Stories ought to have happy endings; people ought to be more interesting, everyone ought to have better taste. That’s a quote from the writer Harold Brodkey.” I show Dylan my autographed copy of Brodkey’s First Love and Other Sorrows that I bought at Gotham Book Mart.
“Where does this guy teach? Can we get you enrolled there?”
I pull the book away and dump it back into my duffel bag before Dylan gets ketchup on it.
I tell him about the nice young writer, Paul, who works at Gotham; how Paul always takes my list of books the moment I descend the stairway, how he proceeds to climb ladders or crawl under end caps, to locate them for me. I’m hoping to throw Dylan off the scent of Evan. “Maybe I’ll just invent my own genre: the literary romance. I’ll become the Jane Austen of the twentieth century.”
“You do that,” Dylan retorts, with a last gulp of Guinness beer.
A homeless man taps on the wall of windows of the café, gesturing to our untouched basket of bread. Dylan wraps it up in a napkin and we carry it out to him, along with a turkey sandwich that Dylan buys for him.
We head down to the Centerfold Coffee House on West 86 to a poetry reading where Brandon is reading some of his work. It’s strictly a no-frills gig, with a table that offers cookies for a nickel and a cup of cider for a quarter. My brother buys me some goodies, and we settle into seats. Dylan looks as if someone is extracting his toenails one at a time with pliers as we listen to poet after poet recite his or her works-in-progress. At the intermission Brandon joins us. I praise him on his unusual imagery, while my brother sits with a puss on his face. Brandon informs us that he is planning a costume party for Halloween. I needle Dylan, in punishment for his not finding anything redeeming to say of Brandon’s poetry.
“I was thinking you could be The Grinch,” I suggest to Dylan, struggling to keep a straight face. “You have a green shirt, and I could lend you a pair of my green tights. You’ve got a gigantic head, and you’ve got big enough feet. We’d just have to attach some paper maiche’ to the toes of your shoes to make them pointy.”
“Pointy shoes and green tights? Oh, that ought to have the women flocking in droves. Is my head gigantic?” Dylan consults Brandon, who shrugs.
I come in for the kill. “And you’ve got The Grinch paunch.”
Dylan feels for his stomach under his leather coat, probing like a doctor for the alleged paunch. His self-doubt lasts but a second; satisfied that his stomach is flat enough, the old smug demeanor returns.
“The Grinch is a great idea. Don’t take all the credit for it when you win a prize!” I have to turn away to keep from laughing.
Dylan informs us that he won’t make the party; he’s going to be driving Mom down to Maryland for an extended stay wi
th Dad that week. Dad has not been happy in his retirement, so he signed on for a tour of duty with the Air National Guard at Andrews Air Force Base three months ago. At first Mom was delighted at the prospect of being on her own for the first time in forty years, of not having anyone to cook for, or clean up after, no kids or husband making demands upon her. But that got stale after a month or so, and now she’s missing Dad.
“You’ll still come, right?” Brandon asks. “I think Evan is coming home for it.”
My heart flutters at the mention of Evan, my head suddenly swirling with thoughts of what to wear. Dylan’s attention has been riveted all evening on a pretty redhead who at that moment wiggles up to the podium to recite her poetry. Dylan sits up taller in his chair, confident that he’s caught her eye. She’s dressed head to toe in black, no makeup, perhaps to alert us to the fact that she’s a serious person who does not take the business of existence, or poetry, lightly. I glance down at my whimsical Dreamcoat with its colorful quarks, my jeans embroidered at the ankles with pink lace, my herringbone print pumps with black bows on the toes, which seemed like such a great find on the clearance rack only yesterday.
“God called me the other day,” the redhead recites portentously. She punctuates this gem with a Long Pause, and a sweeping glance that implies we’re in for something clever beyond belief. “Collect.”
People applaud. Dylan rolls his eyes and slouches back in his seat, nabbing my last cookie. “You can go as Barbara Cartland, minus the millions.”
~~~~~
I’m hired for the nanny job on the spot. My charge is three- year-old Felix Wingtrape IV, who turns out to be a sweet little curly-haired nymph of a thing who can barely speak two words of English. On my first day Esme the maid tips me off that I’m the ninth nanny little Felix has had since birth, the last one having lasted barely two months—although she does not offer information on the reasons for these short tenures. I am the only English-speaking nanny Felix has ever had, which would account for his almost nonexistent vocabulary. Esme gives me the dirt on the Wingtrape parents—Randolph Wingtrape is a trust fund brat who dabbles in various businesses, and is rumored to have a problem abusing prescription drugs. His wife, Althea, is a bigwig in the fashion field. Randolph is her second husband; her first husband, Melvin, lives in the first floor apartment. Melvin and Randolph were best friends before Randolph stole Althea away, but now they are all chums, according to Esme.
I’m welcome to join them for meals, as part of my salary, but when five o’clock hits I can’t wait to be out of there, and I always beg off with some excuse, like I have a dance class to attend. Felix is sweet, and remarkably self-contained; he can amuse himself for hours with his toys and imaginings, in the same way Mom often describes me as having been as a child. He is surprisingly affectionate—given the detachment of his parents—climbing into my lap to be read to, or attempting to share his favorite treats with me.
Dylan wants to inspect my new digs. It’s nothing to write home about, a small bedroom with a hallway where I keep a tiny refrigerator, hot plate, and toaster oven on the surface of an old copying machine, and an even smaller bathroom, and another room that serves as an office for my employer.
“Why is this guy’s office in your apartment?”
“He said he’s going to move his stuff out. He says he only uses it while the nanny is working, never when I’d be in here.”
Dylan is clearly the son of a cop, his suspicions immediately aroused. I placate him by agreeing to hold Randolph to his promise to move his things out before the month’s end. Dylan asks that I not wander about the city, alone, too late at night.
“Where would I go? I don’t have any friends in the city but Sinclair, who lives right next door to me.”
Dylan gives me Brandon’s new phone number. He’s officially ensconced at the iguana loft. If I have any problems, and I can’t reach Dylan in Queens, I’m to call Brandon.
Dylan jots another number for me—Evan’s. I can barely believe it. I have to smother my glee with my best poker face.
“Evan is always home. He’s a homebody.”
“He’s not out gallivanting with the coffee shop girl?”
“Nothing came of that. Any problems, and you can’t reach either me or Brandon, then call Evan. But only in case of emergency,” he says, with a smirk.
~~~~~
We drive uptown toward Lincoln Center. I commend David on his finesse of city traffic. He doesn’t hesitate to cut off a cabby or clog up a crosswalk, when occasion calls for it. He says the traffic in Manhattan pales in comparison to London’s spider web of congested streets.
The rain retreats, and we stroll the plaza. David fishes for coins in his pockets, and delivers a penny into my hand for wishing in the fountain at Lincoln Center.
“You Brits are so wasteful, tossing away perfectly good coins,” I taunt.
He snorts with delight at this, and waits for me to make my wish. “Ah, still holding the teacup comment against me,” he sighs, and then tenderly, “What will you wish for?”
“Well, I can’t tell you, then it won’t come true.”
“Oh, is that the rule?”
“Must you question everything I say? It can be exhausting.” I feign weariness, palming the copper coin in my hand. I cock back my black bowler hat so that I may take in the full view of the splashing fountain.
“Well, I must not exhaust you, we’ve only just arrived.” He gives a flick to his hair, which I discover he’s parted off to the side today, rather than down the middle.
“What’s with the side part?” I squint at him in the arresting sunlight.
“You noticed!” He seems genuinely touched.
“That part starts in Jersey.” He howls with laughter at this.
“Ah,” he says, and lays his coin on his thumb and with a flick sends it dropping into the bubbling waters. I send mine soaring too, dismayed to find myself thinking suddenly of Evan. It is as if Evan and the city have become inexplicably entwined in my mind, like coils of colorful DNA. I fling my bright penny into the clear water. I wish for a published story in a magazine of some renown, something that will capture Evan’s attention.
Waves of people ebb and flow past us, bundled into wool and cashmere, some heading for the Metropolitan Opera House. A fuchsia banner announces the performance of Don Quixote by American Ballet Theatre. David was unable to get us tickets.
“We ought to see the Ring Series, there are plenty of tickets left for that,” he reports as we stroll the plaza.
“Gee, I wonder why.” I hug my Technicolor Dreamcoat about me, which is not warm enough for the sudden cold front, but David seems oblivious to my shivering.
David wears a gray wool coat that bears the same worn look of all his clothes, as if he hasn’t bought anything new in ages, as if he couldn’t be bothered with something so trivial as outfitting himself. He wears corduroys today—a hopeful development in an otherwise drab wardrobe, except for the mustard color—although they are too high on his waist and bunched with a clunky belt. He wears the scuffed black leather shoes, molded to a comfortable soft cast about his large feet.
“You ought to invest in a pair of jeans,” I suggest.
“Americans are so deliberately casual,” he observes.
“Deliberately casual? As opposed to accidentally casual?” I try to wrap my mind around that one.
“Have you given any more thought to the opera?”
“I’ve only seen one opera. Madame Butterfly. I cried and cried,” I reflect, hugging the Dreamcoat about me, and checking to make sure the rain has not injured the quarks.
“Wagner would be a baptism of fire of sorts. It’s five hours long.”
“Five hours?” I halt in my tracks before the long drop of stairs leading to the street level. “Remind me to bring my Sony Walkman with my Springsteen tapes.”
He cringes, as if my lack of enthusiasm for high culture is painful to him. “Ah, yes, Americans like their entertainment exceptionally light.”
“And the English like theirs exceptionally dull.”
We cross the street toward the movie theatre that is showing Wings of Desire, the foreign film about gentle angels in trench coats who listen, unseen, to the troubles of mankind. It is a beautiful and moving film. It varies between black and white, and color. In the end, one angel, Damien, falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist named Marion, and he gives up his wings to live a brief but blissful existence with her.
“Would you give up your wings for me?” I ask, as we exit the theatre two hours later and meander about for a bite to eat. My feet are beginning to hurt in my black suede shoes with the two-inch heels and double ankle strap secured with pink polka-dot buttons. The streets have been washed clean with rain, and there is the feeling in the air that everyone has suddenly come outside, now that the weather has lifted. I wear black nylon tights, and a short pink dress the color of cotton candy.
“I haven’t got any to give up for you,” he says playfully.
“But if you did,” I press.
“Well, that seems rather unfair. You won’t agree to give up one evening to accompany me to the opera, yet I’m to give up my heavenly wings for you?”
“Yes, that’s right. Would you?”
We stroll, stopping to read menus taped to windows, not sure what we are hungry for. David defers to my choice. I find a pretty diner with pink and blue neon lights, and a black and white checkerboard floor, and David shoots it a skeptical look but gives in to settling down at a table near the window on the upper level where we can people-watch. We are handed two menus, and I insist that David skip his usual tea, in lieu of a Brooklyn egg cream. I make him use a straw.
“Straws are for children,” he says, with a pinched look.
“Don’t you ever tire of being so serious?”
“Every man dreads the day when he will find himself bewitched by some woman and be forced to give up his wings,” he says gravely, proving my point about the seriousness.
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