Crazy for Cornelia

by Chris Gilson

  “The right thing?” Eddie sounded mean and spiteful as usual, but with a rehearsed quality. “Your old man’s a lout and a layabout, without me he couldn’t even provide for my sister. And you’re worse. No union rule’s going to cover you, lad.”

  Kevin held the receiver away as Eddie’s bile spilled out. He knew.

  “So what did Chester Lord offer you?” He slammed the phone down. “Andrew, I’m not going to rant and rave or anything. I’m just going to lay out the facts, let you decide for yourself. Uncle Eddie got bought off. He says the union rules don’t matter here. He’s not going to help me.”

  For once, Andrew didn’t seem certain.

  “Something stinks about that.” The doorman’s forehead remained marbly. “The rules are pretty clear. You still got a job here, till the union says you don’t. Chester Lord can’t change that. Fact is, Eddie never did shit for the guys, ‘less we leaned all over him. Hate to say this, but I don’t see no real cause to fire you, Kevin.”

  “There isn’t, Andrew. Right now, I just want to put my uniform on and go to work. Anything wrong with that?”

  Andrew mulled it over, the kind eyes seeming to flare with resentment of Eddie. “Don’t see how that’s out of line.”

  Good, Kevin thought. “If Chester Lord and Eddie can pull this on me now, they can do it to you or Vlad next week, right?”

  “Maybe.” Andrew studied his white gloves. “You gettin’ at something?”

  “If I ask you to take a side, would you go with me or Eddie?”

  He saw the embryo of defiance in Andrew, disturbing his years of keeping a positive attitude. “I dunno, son. Just get your ass in gear, suit up and get to the lobby.”

  “Andrew, maybe you could send Vlad in for a second while I get dressed. I just want to talk to him.”

  “Cornelia, is everything all right?”

  Her father’s voice crept through the bedroom door like an anxious fog.

  “I’ll be out soon, Daddy.”

  This stubborn need to sit alone and collect her thoughts interfered with her duty to Tucker and the rest, but especially to her father. She felt a damp itch in the small of her back. The perfect folds of her dress seemed as hot and cumbersome as an astronaut’s suit.

  “Where are you, child?” the French-accented foghorn rumbled through the door.

  Dear Madame, that frail tyrant, would probably want to crucify her at the Wedding Bower if she could see her bride, sitting on her bed in her dress, no doubt creasing the taffeta.

  “Cornelia! Everyone’s waiting.” Her father’s worried wail broke through and nearly jerked her stocking feet to respond, but she would not allow herself. Not yet.

  Something needed remembering.

  Or not really some thing, since she had taken inventory of all her essentials. Only her lacy white shoes still lay on the velvet-cushioned hassock like lovebirds, waiting to be slipped on.

  No. Some one needed to be remembered, she felt certain.

  Cornelia held the framed photograph of her mother tight and closed her eyes. She imagined her mother saying “I do” to her father. Then a blizzard of rice and good wishes as he swept her away in… a carriage?

  A horse-drawn carriage came to mind quite suddenly. White with a black landau roof.

  “Daddy, how did you leave the church on your wedding day?”

  She endured the long silence.

  “An MSG,” she thought he said. Monosodium glutamate?

  “A what?”

  “An MG. A car, darling. A little English sports car. Someone stuck white ribbons all over it. Cornelia…”

  “I’m almost ready.”

  She sounded more reassuring than she felt, her fingertips pressing white on the silver frame that held her mother’s picture. She kept her eyes closed tightly. It seemed so necessary to finish the image she tried to make out of the faintest traces and shadows.

  Something to do with a heart, hers or somebody else’s.

  But that would be Tucker, wouldn’t it?

  The three doormen stood alone in the lobby, now that all the wedding guests on their list had been deposited in Penthouse A. They formed a huddle. Kevin argued and cajoled while Andrew, arms behind his back, pursed his lips in mighty conflict, and Vlad the Self-Impaler cleared his throat for an announcement.

  “Da!” The Russian doorman brandished the old newspaper from December with the headline, “Doorman Saves Deb from Dad.” Kevin had kept one copy of it in his locker and another cuddled under the pillow of his bed in Alphabet City.

  “What?” Andrew asked him, cranky from inner turmoil.

  “It’s the downtrodding of a young worker,” Vlad barked to Andrew, summoning up all the phony communist party platitudes ever hammered into him. “The boy has been trampled by the owners. Eddie Feeney is a traitor. We must stand together.”

  “Vlad.” Andrew blew out air, frustrated. “Even if Kevin got screwed, what do you expect us to do about it?”

  Kevin answered, “I think we ought to go see Eddie up at 2000 Fifth.”

  “Yes! No one will watch the door!” Vlad stood at attention, his chest stuck out. “We will make our stand and fuck the owners!”

  The three strode out the bronze doors of 840 Fifth Avenue, Vlad and Kevin holding their chins high and propelling Andrew forward with them. For the first time in the seventy-five-year history of 840 Fifth Avenue, the lobby stood unattended.

  Out on 65th Street turning uptown on Fifth, Philip Grace hurried toward them, his battered leather camera bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Kevin Doyle! Got your call, man.” Philip looked at the three doormen, then peered into the empty lobby. “Seems to me, two of you oughtta be on duty. You leavin’ 840 Fifth to the workin’ press?”

  “I told you, Philip,” Kevin said. “You want a real story, come with us.”

  She could only feel around the fringes of her memory, stringy and peripheral. There was definitely a person in uniform, then the vague image of a picnic enjoyed with a man, perhaps the same one but out of uniform, on the rooftop of a big stone building that seemed a little like Notre Dame. Or someplace. But in all these images, never a face to match.

  “Corneeee!”

  The reedy uncontrolled shriek tore through her bedroom door, collapsing her structure of half-captured memories.

  “Corny, you’re making us crazy out here. If you don’t come out this minute, I will shave my head.”

  Uh, oh. She realized how critical the wedding situation must have become for her father and Madame to pluck poor, delicate Tina from the line of bridesmaids to intercede. Well. She sighed her father’s familiar sigh of obligations heeded, hearing it like a strange voice trapped somewhere in her soul, and got to her feet.

  She slipped her feet into the lily-white shoes. Then she opened her maiden’s bedroom door for the last time.

  Eddie Feeney, in a uniform too long for his legs and too small for his arms, glowered as he spun the revolving door of 2000 Fifth Avenue.

  New Money must have moved into this building, Kevin noted. The shoulders of Eddie’s new maroon uniform had epaulets to match the glitz of the renovated lobby. The light of an oversized chandelier bounced off the gilded walls and shiny marble surfaces. This ornate room had once been old and stuffy. For fifteen years, Kevin’s father had worked the door, sorted mail, and called each resident by name.

  “Where’s my dad?” Kevin wanted to know.

  “On a break.” Eddie’s eyes shifted uncomfortably seeing Philip Grace. “What’s this asshole doing here?”

  “Capturin’ the real you, fool,” Philip told him, yanking his camera out of his bag and pop-popping off pictures of Eddie covering his face with his arms like a crook.

  “What the hell are you up to, Kevin?” Eddie yelled. He didn’t call him Dumbo now, Kevin noticed. “Andrew, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m with Kevin,” Andrew said with his jaw out, nodding so hard his hat slid back and Kevin could see the base of his “I Love Jesus�
� skullcap.

  “Chester Lord fired me without cause.” Kevin fished in his pocket and pulled out the page ripped off the staff room bulletin board. “Here’s the regulation.”

  “Two forty-seven.” Eddie Feeney didn’t bother to glance at it, running his tongue over his lips, his eyes drifting in every direction. “That’s bullshit. You’re a mental case.”

  “We’re going on strike, Eddie. With or without you.”

  “A strike. You tellin’ me how to do my job, now?”

  “You learn something new every day.”

  Eddie’s chest bunched up under his coat, his fists tightening. And then Dennis Doyle appeared from the deep corridor of the rear lobby. Dennis looked like some banana republic colonel in his new uniform. He looked stunned to see his son. For the first time Kevin could remember, Dennis embraced him in a hug as fierce as a wrestling lock.

  “It’s good to have you back in uniform, son.”

  “Dad, we need your help.”

  “What for?”

  “Job action!” Vlad the Self-Impaler held up the Globe page with the photo of Kevin and Corny and shook it in the air. “Wrongful firing at 840 Fifth. The workers unite.”

  “Eddie sold us out, Dad. Chester Lord fired me in violation of R247. Eddie won’t do anything.”

  Kevin kept an eye on Eddie while he spoke. Not a pretty sight. He could smell his uncle now, the heavy musk of a trapped animal. He watched him seem to devolve, before his eyes, from Homo sapiens doorman into the essential brawling Eddie. His forehead jutted over his eyes, ancient resentment forcing his mouth open with what looked like roast-beef gristle caught between his teeth.

  “So it’s you or Kevin I have to believe, Eddie?” His father gave his uncle a stare of royal contempt Kevin hadn’t seen since Charles Barkley played for the Suns.

  Eddie looked slick and sweaty as he appealed to his father, for the first time ever. “I got you your job. Your kid’s so full of crap, he can’t even fart straight.”

  “Let’s go, men,” Dennis said.

  Eddie growled, his fingers flexing in their gloves, and started to block their way. Dennis and Kevin looked at each other, grabbed him up together and shoved him against the wall.

  “Don’t make me tell the union management on you, Eddie,” Dennis said. “You can get fired easier than any of us.”

  The delegate looked away defeated, no longer meeting Dennis’s eyes.

  “Hey, Eddie,” Kevin said.

  Eddie turned back to scowl at him.

  “Ping!” Kevin snapped his uncle’s left ear with his finger.

  The doormen walked out of 2000 Fifth Avenue, wheeled left, and started downtown from 95th Street. Fifth Avenue sprawled before them with neat rows of expensive co-op buildings on the east side, Central Park on the west. Their first stop was next door, an elegant prewar building.

  Dennis stuck his head in the lobby. “Charlie… Humberto,” he told the two doormen on duty. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “Huh?” An elderly man in a dark blue overcoat and cap with silver trim squinted at them. “We’re on duty here.”

  It took Kevin, Dennis, and Andrew only five minutes to talk the first two doormen into joining them, with Vlad holding the Daily Globe, and pointing to Kevin’s picture for effect. Then it became a movement. In the next ten minutes, the squad of doormen had grown to ten. They strode at a military clip, taking the full width of the sidewalk, with Philip Grace leaping beside them like a border collie. Kevin felt a stirring in his chest. As they greeted the two men tending the next gilt-edged doorway, he felt that he spoke with the voice of legions.

  “Guys,” he yelled, “the doormen are walking.”

  Kevin had never led anyone before. Now a brand-new and giddy confidence glowed from inside out. They were walking down the glorious stretch of Fifth Avenue known as Museum Mile, bordered by the Museum of the City of New York to the north and the Frick Collection to the south. In the middle, just twelve blocks down, stood the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Kevin’s mother had last shown him Giotto’s Lost Saint Sebastian.

  They worked each door they passed steadily and with conviction. By the time the gathering storm of doormen reached the elegant Cooper-Hewitt Museum at 91st Street, their ranks had swollen to thirty men falling behind him.

  “The doormen are walking, ” they yelled. But it wasn’t just a walk now.

  It was a March of the Doormen.

  From every filigreed doorway, men from the ranks of New York City’s private guard enlisted. The polished black brogues began to tramp on the sidewalk like military boots. The working faces—Irish, Puerto Rican, black, Polish—took on a fresh purpose, with shining eyes and chins held higher.

  “The Artist,” Kevin’s father beamed at him.

  They passed the flamboyant Guggenheim Museum on their left. Kevin had walked up the heady, winding aisle of the Guggenheim many times. He had never agreed with some critics who sneered that the slab addition behind the flared white cylinder made it look like a toilet.

  The artist. He was definitely doing something now, pulling these men together in common cause, but was it art?

  Well, why not? Nobody ever did it before, and it would offend some people. But if it worked, that was what mattered.

  As they marched one hundred strong past the big intersection of 86th Street, spilling out into the street and disturbing traffic, the word spread down Fifth Avenue as though Central Park were on fire. On this boulevard where the rich, the mighty, the royalty of New York City looked out their windows at the commotion, none of them would dare face down these marching men. If sanitation workers struck, the doormen could pile up the garbage on the streets. If the police staged a call-in-sick action, the doormen would be extra vigilant for burglars and muggers. But each marcher knew in his heart that, once the doormen walked, neither Old Money nor New Money would open their own doors or whistle for their own cabs.

  All the wealth and power and majesty of Fifth Avenue would collapse like a house built of RSVP cards in the face of an organized doorman strike.

  Gently supported by her father’s arm, Cornelia stepped carefully in the outrageous sweeping dress, lace flowing behind her. Two tiny blond cousins lifted the ends in their small fingers, giggling as they tried to match the bride’s steps.

  Ooooh.

  She heard the guests in genuine throes of appreciation or envy as she rounded the corner and revealed herself. She saw family friends and neighbors. Lily Stern, haughty and mildly disapproving. Old Chip Lindsay, leering. The two Roberts, her old friends, nudging each other and smirking like schoolboys. Don’t men ever grow up? Especially Robert No. 2, who stared at her gown with a fascination that went beyond admiration. Envy seemed to roar from his face. Robert No. 2 had always been overly fascinated by his sister’s clothes closet. And Tina, her maid of honor, crossing her eyes to make Corny laugh. Memories had begun to flicker as she walked down the aisle, with so many familiar faces.

  Madame had coached her in each step. She moved forward, head held high and unwavering as though a stack of twenty volumes rested on her forehead.

  She glanced sideways toward her father. No poker player, her father, his eyes reflecting doubt. He stood near a woman she dimly remembered, at least six feet tall in a slinky dress, with prominent features and an explosion of hair like a burning bush. Her eyebrows were dark and arched, her lips wide and somehow comforting.

  And now she reached the Wedding Bower where Tucker stood. He stood so proudly and threw off such absolute confidence. Her father released her arm with a little squeeze, then angled off to the side and left her to the bower, bequeathing her to the groom.

  Tucker steered her gently toward him with his strong hands. She stepped into the fragrant gazebo and the minister greeted her, bobbing his bald head and several chins.

  “Dearly beloved…” the minister began.

  By the time Kevin steered them the last block to 840 Fifth Avenue, the March of the Doormen had grown to over two hundred men thunderi
ng in close formation.

  Pedestrians stood aside and gawked. Yellow taxis and black Town Cars, locked in that yellow and black checkerboard of New York streets, screeched and piled up in a jumble of stopped traffic.

  Vlad the Self-Impaler marched on point, arms swaying and legs lifted high up in the old Red Army parade ground style. Andrew had fallen in lockstep with him, eyes gleaming with the gentle fury of the righteous. And even Dennis Doyle was a firebrand today, his nostrils flaring in defiance as he marched beside his son.

  “I won’t forget this, Dad,” Kevin said, squeezing his father’s arm.

  “Nor will I.” Dennis winked at him.

  The minister’s chins opened like an accordion as he began to speak.

  He looks like a frog, Cornelia thought. She had to bite her lower lip to keep from laughing out loud.

  “… in the state of grace and this holy company…” the minister croaked. In the shafts of light seeping in through the French doors to the terrace, his gray hair took on a silvery haze around it, a halo of light.

  “A corona,” Cornelia blurted out. The minister stopped speaking, causing Tucker’s face to spin toward her with a look of sudden horror.

  “Excuse me?” the minister asked, perplexed, and she could hear the faintest murmur in the room.

  “Nothing,” she apologized in a small voice. “Sorry.”

  The odd vision of the halo had gone away. A cloud was passing over the sun outside, and she could see only the minister’s slicked-back gray hair in the winter light.

  Kevin squinted down Fifth Avenue, his chest thrust out against the cold. The unmanned awning of 840 Fifth Avenue came into sight just as the bleating of police sirens grew louder.

  Four blue and white cruisers pulled up to block the entrance to 65th Street. The officers piled out, meeting a crew of eight police officers who suddenly came huffing around the corner from the side street. They carried yellow “Police: Do Not Enter” sawhorses to create a barricade in front of the marchers. Kevin saw that Uncle Eddie hustled along in front with the befuddled building manager Gus Anholdt and a harried police supervisor holding a megaphone.