by Alex Witchel
We hailed a cab and headed to Jim’s Steaks. On the way, his speech restored, Mark pointed out buildings, and seemed to have a story about each one. At the restaurant, we took our loaded trays to the upstairs dining room, settling near a window overlooking South Street. I folded half the sandwich, trying not to look at it, and took a bite. It was good. Actually, it was great (provolone, hold the Cheez Whiz). I ate it in what seemed like four bites, demolishing a bag of potato chips for good measure. Well, tough. Talk about a stressful morning!
After lunch, we did all the tourist things—the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Benjamin Franklin’s house. I felt like a kid, except this time there was no teacher on the field trip, just the cute boy you had the crush on—all for yourself. We visited Christ Church cemetery, where Benjamin Franklin was buried; one of my guidebooks said it was good luck to drop a penny on Franklin’s flat gravestone, as long as it landed heads up. I told this to Mark.
He fished in his pocket for change, pulling out a penny.
“You do it,” he said, handing it to me.
“No, you,” I insisted, waving it away.
“My only wish is that your bottle’s empty on the train ride home,” he said slyly. I laughed, and his eyes looked sparkly because now we had a joke together.
We ended up walking along Walnut Street, in the fancy part of town, chatting away. Suddenly, we stopped. In front of us was a window filled with Pepto-Bismol. This optician’s shop, for some bizarre reason, had intermingled their display of eyeglass frames with blow-up plastic bottles of Pepto-Bismol, boxes of Pepto-Bismol tablets, and even real bottles of the stuff. We stood there, stunned, until we both burst out laughing. I could hardly catch my breath.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
Mark gasped, “I don’t know.”
The woman inside, behind the counter, looked out at us, puzzled, which made us laugh even harder. I wiped my eyes finally and saw that it was nearly four-thirty. I sobered up fast.
“Let’s get back and check on your dry cleaning,” I said.
We walked the short distance to Rittenhouse Square, a beautiful park ringed with hotels and elegant old apartment buildings. In the aftermath of our outburst, Mark Lewis seemed happy and relaxed. I could think only about his shirt.
One look at my fiancé the concierge’s face, and I knew that all was lost. He presented the shirt on a hanger, perfectly pressed, with the streaks of Pepto-Bismol embossed into the fabric for all eternity. The jacket and beige pants, incredibly, were perfect. But Mark’s spirits seemed to plummet. “It’s no problem,” I said forcefully. “We’ll just run down to Hecht’s and buy another shirt.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not worth it. I have this shirt and the other one. I can do without it.”
“Absolutely not,” I insisted. “But, listen, I’m sure you’re tired, so why don’t you go upstairs and rest, and I’ll run over and pick it up myself. No big deal. Just tell me what size you are.”
He looked bemused. “You don’t mind?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I said. At that point, I would have made him a shirt.
“Okay,” he answered. “A sixteen-inch neck and thirty-three-inch sleeves.”
“Fine, I’ll drop it off for you. What time’s dinner?” One thing I had learned in my day with Mark was that momentum was everything. As long as you had him going, going, going, he was easy as pie. It was when he stopped that the trouble started.
“The nine o’clock seating,” he said.
“Then I’ll meet you in the lobby about eight forty-five. Okay?”
He seemed tickled that someone was shopping for him and tickled that we had a date. “Okay,” he said. “And thanks.”
I sank into the backseat of a cab and headed to Hecht’s. I was completely exhausted, but all in all, I was damned lucky and I knew it. Mark didn’t have to stay, and he didn’t have to be so nice about it either. I would buy him the best shirt in the store.
I liked being in a men’s department again, I realized, noting the handsome marble columns. Men’s clothes were so simple, somehow. I saw the right pile and headed toward it. Light blue, light blue, I thought, sifting through a number of picked-over candidates. There was only one, and it had some sort of crest embroidered on it, though low enough on the body so that no one would see it.
I dropped off the shirt at the hotel’s front desk and asked to have a bellhop deliver it; I could just see myself knocking on Mark’s door and him answering in his underwear—the perfect ending to the perfect day. I headed to my own room—on a different floor, mercifully—and stuffed my garment bag, still splotched pink and hardened now, into the trash. I’d bought a new one at Hecht’s.
I ran the shower for the longest time, letting it beat on the back of my neck. Drying off, I surveyed my clothes. Le Bec-Fin was the fanciest restaurant in town, but I’d been so set on this being business that everything I’d brought seemed too corporate. I had resolutely left in my closet the dress I’d bought with Paul.
Finally I settled on a plain black shift, without its matching jacket, black pumps, and pearl earrings. Simple and elegant, I thought, looking in the mirror. Nothing beat diarrhea for a flat stomach.
Promptly at 8:45 I was in the lobby, where Mark was waiting, wearing his new shirt. He playfully lifted his blazer to show me the insignia. “It fits perfectly,” he said.
“Hallelujah. Now, if you drop anything on it tonight, you’re on your own.”
“Fair enough.”
At the restaurant, the captain bowed and scraped and led us into a womb of luxury, all flowers and fabric and crystal chandeliers. The luscious scents from the kitchen mingled with perfume and Scotch, the way my mother’s mink coat used to smell when she came home from a party. I sailed through the dining room wearing my half an outfit boldly (it was Philadelphia, after all, who was going to see me?), high on my relief at how the day had turned out.
We were seated at a corner table laden with china and silver. “Champagne?” the maître d’ asked, and before I could say no, a flute was placed before me, and it was the first Champagne I had ever tasted that wasn’t too sweet. My neck loosened and I leaned back in my chair, feeling expensive.
We ordered a procession of wonderful food: asparagus and foie gras and scallops and lamb, accompanied by equally fabulous wines, white and red, and all the while, Mark talked and told stories, interesting stories. About a book he had thought of writing and hadn’t. About growing up in Chicago, and how he had learned about art from his mother and how his father had never cared for it. His father was a tax lawyer, too, it turned out—not to mention the former employer of his almost-ex-daughter-in-law. I tried to hide my surprise. With all the women hanging around museums sporting sketch pads and plunging necklines, Mark had to go to a law firm to find one?
His parents had divorced when he was five. In his second marriage, Mark’s father had three more sons in rapid succession, all of whom eventually became tax lawyers and joined the family business, shunning the oddball art writer. The three half brothers had played football for the same high school where Mark had edited the newspaper. He wasn’t particularly good at sports, he said, an admission delivered with such a miserable face that I could well believe he was a disaster at them. It was a vulnerable, un-macho thing to say, and it made me warm to him even more than I already had. What a treat not to sit down to dinner with someone whose idea of conversation was reporting his bench-press weight.
“So this is like a big club, this law firm where everyone works except you,” I said. “That sounds complicated.”
“And my stepbrothers … I mean my half brothers,” he said, “all love skiing, too. They went together every vacation they could.”
“Did you go with them?” I asked.
He smiled wryly. “Jews don’t ski,” he said. “My brothers to the contrary.”
I almost choked. “You’re Jewish?” I sputtered. Somehow the possibility had never occurred to me. I figured if I liked him, he couldn’t possib
ly be.
“Well, yes,” he answered matter-of-factly.
“But I saw your credit card at Orso and it said Mark Lewis, Jr. Jews don’t have juniors.”
“Well, Jews in my family do,” he said, amused. “They came here from Germany before the Civil War. My family thinks they’re just as Episcopalian as their Lake Shore Drive neighbors.”
“Very fancy, Lake Shore Drive,” I said.
“Everyone has to pay taxes,” he said, and winked.
This was fun. I kept asking questions, and he kept answering them. He had gone to Yale, where he started an arts magazine. He had always loved journalism and art, and a professor had convinced him he could combine those interests by writing. I learned that he liked his stepmother fine, and his stepfather, too—when he saw him. Mark’s stepdad was the CEO of a big pharmaceutical company that had major plants in Asia. His father, by comparison, was a pillar of the local community who sat on numerous committees and seemed to know by osmosis when any traffic light on Michigan Avenue wasn’t working. He split his time between the office and his club across the street. Mark’s mother was his favorite, warm and supportive. Besides being a painter, she was a docent at the Art Institute.
Before I knew it, it was time for dessert. Mark ordered a mocha meringue, and even though I wasn’t hungry anymore, I asked for the tarte tatin, which was exquisite. As was Mark’s meringue, apparently, because after a single bite he closed his eyes in bliss. “Taste this,” he said, and it was indeed delicious. He took another bite, and his eyes brimmed with tears, which quickly spilled over.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, taken aback.
“It’s such a Proustian taste for me,” he explained, wiping his face with his napkin. “My grandmother used to get a cake like this for my birthday when I was growing up, and I haven’t tasted anything like it in years. I thought it was a taste I would never have again.” He snuffled a little into the napkin, then smiled. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I guess I didn’t realize how close to the surface some of this stuff is.”
“Like what?” I asked, and just as I had told him everything about Bucky that had come into my head, so he told me his stories, about feeling ostracized from his father and brothers and wanting only to leave Chicago. By the time he was in eighth grade, his mother had gotten him a part-time job at the Art Institute organizing slides, and in his free moments he had had the run of the place. It felt like home, he said.
He visited his father every weekend and was forced into the touch football games, but no matter how often Mark tried to talk to his dad about art, the discussion invariably turned back to traffic lights.
Now, with his own divorce, Mark said, he was determined not to repeat his family’s mistakes, and he was committed to having a better relationship with his son than he had had with either his father or his stepfather. But if his ex-wife really carried through on her threat to move back to Chicago, Mark said, he didn’t know what else to do except maybe move back as well, so he could see his son, Benjamin, grow up.
“Do you really think you’ll have to do that?” I asked, feeling my chest tighten.
He shrugged. “I hope not.”
It was after eleven when we left the restaurant, and we walked back up Walnut Street toward the Rittenhouse. He stayed closer to me than he had during the day, and though we didn’t touch, I could feel he wanted to. It was like being fifteen again and back at the movies when the guy was about to put his arm around you, all awkward and eager and worried.
Once we were inside the lobby he turned to me. “Want to get a nightcap?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
“Well, it’s pretty late,” I hedged. “Why don’t you give me a call tomorrow, when you’re done with the museums?” Our plan was to split up during the day so that I could finish my information guide.
“Okay,” he said as we headed through the lobby. “Are you sure about the nightcap?”
I nodded. As we got into the elevator, I instinctively reached toward the lapels of his jacket as I started to explain why I couldn’t have a drink with him, and he kissed me. His mouth was soft, and his kiss was small and tentative, the next few less so.
The doors opened, and we somehow moved into the hallway, mid-kiss. I pulled my head back. “I can’t do this,” I said, but when he kissed me again, I let him. It was just too good. Somehow we had ended up in front of his door, and he fumbled for his key.
“Listen,” I said, pulling myself out of his embrace. “I really want to do this, but I really can’t.”
“Why?” He put his hands on my hips to propel me forward.
“Because my job this weekend is to make sure that you write this piece.”
“Don’t worry about the piece,” he said. Now he was kissing my neck.
“Easy for you to say. Listen,” I said, moving my body away from his while holding on to his forearms. “I was thrilled that you still wanted to have dinner with me after everything that happened today. But even though you’re doing this piece for extra money and something of a lark, this is actually the high point of my job. So if I go inside with you now, and if for some reason the piece doesn’t work out, I’ll spend forever thinking it was somehow my fault. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“No,” he said.
I started to laugh. “Still a guy under all that artistic stuff, huh?” I said.
He smiled. Sort of.
“After this piece is turned in, I demand a rain check,” I said, letting go of his arms. “Okay?”
“We’ll see,” he said, opening the door.
“Playing hard-to-get, now?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Yes, I guess I am.” I stepped back. “I really did have a wonderful time,” I said softly. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “Good night, Sandy,” he said, shutting the door gently. I stood there a moment, disappointed. I had loved finding that feeling again, the kiss that disconnects you from the world, where you drop and soar and somehow land in just the right place. I was sorry to let it go.
Once I was back in my room, I kicked off my shoes and let out my breath. I really did like this guy. But nightcaps were out of the question. If Susie Schein even suspected that I was down here kissing the help, she’d kill me. I unzipped my dress and couldn’t help but giggle. That was half the fun.
I got up early the next morning and made my rounds to the Reading Terminal Market, which was gigantic, and to the stores on South Street and beyond. I was the picture of efficiency; all I could focus on was being finished by the time Mark was, and seeing him again for dinner. By midafternoon I was finally done, though I’d forgotten to double-check some addresses. I went into a bookstore and found a Philadelphia travel guide and, after I’d copied down the information I needed, leafed through the section about the Old City, where we’d been yesterday. Then I noticed it: “Betsy Ross House.” I had studiously ignored the fact that I was in the city containing the Ross family shrine, but now, with time on my hands, I thought I should just go ahead and do it, get it out of my system once and for all.
I read the description: “Upholsterer and seamstress Betsy Ross lived either in this house or in the one that stood in the courtyard next door. Though she was long believed to have designed the American flag, this claim has now been disproved. (Meager—not firm—evidence does indicate that she sewed a flag for the early federal government.) Ross, who lived from 1752 to 1836 and was married three times and widowed twice, is buried in the courtyard.”
What? She lived in this house or the one next door? She was believed to have designed the American flag, but the only evidence shows she sewed a flag?
So this was Bucky’s illustrious ancestor. A big fat fake. Who says there’s nothing to genetics?
I went outside and hailed a cab. “Two thirty-nine Arch Street,” I said.
“What’s that?” the driver asked.
“The Betsy Ross House,” I said impatiently. “Ever hear of it?”
“Yeah, but I’ve never been th
ere.”
“Really? That’s rather incredible, isn’t it, considering the fact that Philadelphia is not terribly large and is usually overrun with tourists?” He looked at me blankly in the rearview mirror. Why was I haranguing an innocent cabdriver when what I really wanted was to harangue the entire Ross family?
The cab pulled up to a tiny, well-kept house. “Well, this is it,” I said loudly. “What do you think?”
He looked out the window. “Never been here,” he repeated.
I gave him his fare and got out. A group of children was going in ahead of me, and I paced back and forth outside to keep some distance, until a guard started eyeing me suspiciously. I walked in and found the first sign.
“Welcome Is Thee,” it read. Oh, brother. “My name is Betsy Claypoole, but thee may know me as Betsy Ross, the name I had long ago. Times were hard then. We were at war with Great Britain, my husband John had died, and I was but 24 years of age. I sewed curtains for windows and beds, but during the war I had to find other work to make a living.”
I didn’t even want to know what a bed curtain was. I moved on to a dining room setup.
“This parlor, most of all, brings back memories. In early 1777 it was here I met the gentleman from Congress who came to me to make a flag. The design, I understand, was done by Mr. Hopkins.”
Oh, really?
“With these hands I cut and sewed a flag with 13 five-point stars and 13 stripes. On June 14 this became our flag, and on July 4 the warships then in port delivered 13-gun salutes and flew the colors I had made.”
I turned toward a curio cabinet in the corner, which held a thick book labeled CLAYPOOLE FAMILY BIBLE. The sign said that it had been presented to the house by Betsy Ross’s descendants: Catherine B. Swift and Mrs. T. Jones, of Richmond, Ind., and John Balderston, of Beverly Hills, Ca.
Wait a minute! No John Buckingham Ross, Sr., of Green Hills, N.Y.?
Two of the girls in the children’s group pushed past me. “It seems to me,” one said, “that the guy who designed the flag should be as famous as the girl who sewed it.” Well, it seemed that way to me, too.