The Day the Bozarts Died

by Larry Duberstein

  When Jan Edelman complained that her impost had doubled over six years, Kristen Dane opened her books to show in black and white (“and red,” Dane laughs) that over the same short course property values throughout the Tech District and the neighboring Old Port had risen a shocking 800%. “No question, it was crazy. Houses that had just sold for 30,000 were being listed for 300,000—and people were rushing to buy them.”

  Monk Barrett was barely hanging on. Stanley Noseworthy had once been able to help Barrett with the rent. Now, a decade past his one flash of fame, Noseworthy needed help himself. In ’93, he was secretly residing in his tiny studio and “doing menial”—hiring out for wages at a temp agency shapeup.

  Barrett was doing even less. “Pretty much allergic to work,” he spent more time thimblerigging than painting now. Until they caught him out and threatened prosecution, his bread-and-butter was going to the airport with false claims of lost luggage. He would scoop a discarded stub on a Sunday, then call on Monday to inquire if his missing suitcase had been located. The airlines, forever in chaos about these matters, would cut a check for $250.

  Barrett would shoplift CD’s and return them for refunds. He would sneak into a movie, then storm out demanding his money back. He would open a bank account to get the free toaster-oven, sell the appliance, and close the account.

  Noseworthy and Kenniston made a running gag of all this, postulating an apocryphal book, The Collected Scams of Monk Barrett and adding regularly to its imaginary table of contents. Others were troubled by Barrett’s way of life. “Maybe the world did owe him a living,” says Bea Jasperson, “but I hated knowing about these things. I could never understand why he didn’t simply go get a job.”

  Liz Clougherty calls herself a hypocrite for not reporting Barrett to the authorities. “It was morally uncomfortable, but I just looked the other way. I never even spoke to Monk about it directly. Not that it would have done any good. But for my own sake, I should have said something.”

  For the most part, Kristen Dane was right. While no one liked the gentle rent increases, everyone else could afford them. In addition to having “the perfect deal anyway, a rich ex-husband,” Firestone was selling paintings through the same SoHo gallery whose principals had once told her she should “perhaps consider law school as a career.” Ed Bellingham won a Caldecott Medal for his illustrations of the Great Lakes shipping trade. Tad Smith’s photographs were an automatic inclusion in omnibus shows. Arnie Cloud had a waiting list for pieces not yet even conceived.

  The creaking VW buses, Cloud’s and Edelman’s, were still in the parking lot but right alongside them were Firestone’s Saab, Jasperson’s Lexus, and Smith’s BMW. Even the dogs had gone upscale. Edelman’s mutt (named Jeff, of course, and, according to Cloud, “an undistinguished pile of fur and bones on the floor, but lovable”) had died. His successors included Beryl Baines’ keeshond and Firestone’s fox terrier.

  Nor was anyone scraping up coins for the pay phone. That quaint custom lay in the past, and the phone itself was a relic. The sundry jingles of ringing cell phones (a snatch of reveille, the William Tell Overture, the Marseillaise) became a part of the enclave’s soundtrack. “Which has nothing to do with prosperity, or the poisoning of a culture and all that nonsense,” Baines insists. “Do not listen to Stanley on this subject. I love to hear Stanley fulminate, but you have to understand he is a man who simply detests change.”

  Noseworthy was not alone, however, in detesting the change that came in 1995, when the entire first floor was leased to a prominent building concern. Ravello Brothers Construction had worked closely with the Canterbury Institute of Technology throughout the 20-year transformation of what is now known as the Tech District. Even before “R & D” was the operative shorthand for the new facilities, they were replacing the old two-storey structures with “more feasible plants that went up six storeys and down three more, into the ground. Which made Area 6 work, economically.”

  Adds Dane: “Those large first floor studios were getting hard to rent anyway. Now we had the entire first floor long-termed at full market, which in turn helped subsidize our continuing discounts for the artists upstairs. A total win-win.”

  “Win win for them, maybe,” counters Arnie Cloud. “We felt cornered. The covenant was broken, and we felt more marginalized than ever. The irony was that we had survived Reagan and Poppy Bush, only to get cut down during a Democratic administration. Money for the arts was trickling back, grants were coming through that no one had sniffed in a decade.”

  When Rich Kenniston left, in part for a lower rent outside the city, he sensed he was getting out just ahead of the tsunami. In Kenniston’s analogy, it was not the rug that was pulled out from underneath them, it was the floor. “It was just too weird, with the developers downstairs. I mean, imagine you are a school and one day you show up and find a supermarket where your homeroom used to be. I swear, every morning I came in expecting to find a Quit Premises notice on the front door. Every day I’d be relieved I could go upstairs and get to work. No ma’am, I did not enjoy the stress.”

  Kenniston’s solution soon became part of the problem, as his was the first studio to fall vacant (and remain vacant) after the Ravello Brothers arrived. It was not the last. By 1999, four more vacancies made the whole noble Beaux-Arts experiment begin to feel like a time capsule. “We were all looking over our shoulders by then,” says Cloud. “What if the Ravello Brothers had a bunch of Ravello Sisters, waiting for us to die off? And who was to say they’d wait?”

  * * *

  Clapper was getting around. The dude was in demand—giving a talk in London, getting a medal in Bruges. Sometimes in the “Gadabout” section of the newspaper, you could read where he had fucking dinner, and it was always Ann sitting beside him.

  Rose didn’t seem to mind, either the absences or the Ann part. I was prepared to take up any slack, of course. I had never lost sight of the fact that in an almost real way, some years ago, I had left Nina for Rose—or let Nina leave me because of her. Had that been a mistake? Was it the second worst mistake of my life, or was it (along with the first worst) merely necessary?

  Friends took up the slack. Girlfriends who dragged her off on Friday nights, and a guy (a candidate I’d say) who looked like YoYo Ma, and who was showing up for a while. It was after his fadeout that Rose got the dog.

  My contacts with her were accidental, though a few were substantial. With Clapper away so much, I was drafted into the hero role by default when she locked herself out of her car one time and her studio another. The car I jimmied with a coathanger. I still had a key to her studio, but that would have been way more disturbing than heroic in her eyes, so I hauled out Joe’s extension ladder and crawled in her window.

  Rose was my gal for an hour that day. She was pulling for me like a cheerleader and let out a big Yes! when she saw me slither inside. She even showed up the next day with a bottle of Old Rasputin, the supreme cream of boutique beers. Any such offerings were strictly in acquittal of a perceived debt, though; they confirmed our distance, not our friendship.

  Then one spring our relationship changed radically. Along with the lilacs and the blossomclouded Bradford pears, there came an unprecedented thaw in the glacier encasing her. We visited at the mail table; together we threw open the windows and fitted the coffee room screens. We began to outright associate.

  This had something to do with Clapper being abroad (overseeing an installation in Wenceslaus Square, for goodness’ sake—his own private Prague Spring) and something to do with Hagler. A malamute who was every bit as befurred as his namesake Marvelous Marvin Hagler was shavenbald, the dog extracted her from the studio more, at somewhat predictable times, and I daresay in a more genial mood, as one would expect to see with a pet. Taking care to avoid even the appearance of an ambush, I did manage to insinuate myself into their schedule willynilly.

  I became the backup dogwalker. This was not an insignificant post, for Hagler needed to “walk” a lot, and as his mistress’ req
uests became more frequent they naturally became friendlier. “I hope you boys managed to stay out of trouble,” she would smile, upon our return. Soon she was so beholden to me that we would chat in the coffee room, albeit with Hagler chaperoning. We would find ourselves in a closely arranged trio, two humans bent over the canine in a tangle of heads and hands. A strange sort of intimacy was developing.

  Rose was more poised, more mature. She had the pooch, she had the car (a beater, a ’91 Escort she rarely drove), she had lived a little. Her hair was cut in what she described as the new “grownup look,” loosely fluffed and tightly styled at the same time. It bounced as she moved, catching shards of light. The real changes were not these superficial ones, they lay closer to the core of her personality, and pervaded her voice and stance. I liked the changes.

  What I didn’t like was the way she kept turning our conversations to “Arnold,” as she invariably called the Clapper. Had I seen the brilliant casting of Schweik before Arnold shipped it off to Prague? Was I aware that Arnold was in negotiations not only with MoMA and the Trustees of the Reservation over major outdoor pieces, but also with some highroller who wanted to commission an Elvis memorial in Vegas?

  “Arnold told the guy if they wanted Elvis in the white jumpsuit they would have to pay a million dollars. If they gave him a free hand, it would be 100,000.”

  Fucking Clapper! Disappointed as I was to see Rose so clearly snowed, I was a tad snowed myself. “And what did they say?”

  “Best of both worlds,” she shrugged, worldlier-than-thou. “They are delighted to entertain his ideas—he is the Artist after all, heh heh—but they insist on paying the full million either way. Apparently it’s the figure they need to spend, publicity-payback-wise. A million.”

  “Clapper is hot.”

  “Too hot to touch,” she said, and would that it were so.

  Clapper and Hagler were our topics (and the lovely weather) though I found ways to pad the list. When Rose revealed she had run cross-country in high school and wished to get back to a regimen, I made two offers, one or the other of which she could not refuse: I would take Hagler while she ran, or I would run with her and Hagler, for I too had been a distance runner in high school. “We’ll see,” she said. A tentative yes.

  One day Hags and I returned from a full hour at the river and I announced he was becoming my new best friend. Hags must have confirmed our bond because Rose told me she was jealous, and that maybe she had better come with us next time. Accordingly, I brought back a flyer for the reggae festival on Saturday and suggested we attend. Weed, wine, and Ziggy Marley? Rollin’ on the river, mon.

  “We’ll see,” she said—another tentative yes! The ayes were flat out having it.

  We were looking good until Clapper returned. (Black Thursday on your calendar.) For this was Clapper Triumphant. Clapper in sandals he claimed were a gift from “Vaclav.” Clapper brimful of the Czech musicians he had met, and their charming dacha on the Vltava, where he had “billeted” and heard their tragicomic stories of the bad old days, the microphones in toilet tanks, the smuggled texts.…

  As these worldly self-serving anecdotes accumulated, I noticed my buddy Hags gravitating toward Clapper’s feet, as though drawn by a gentle magnet. So much for my best friend. And my next true love Rose began finding time to get away from her easel, time to go to the river with Hagler and Clapper, so that even as backup dogwalker I was expendible. Clapper was so hot that on Saturday he and Rose and Hagler—and Ann—went together to the festival to hear Ziggy. The son of a bitch could have gotten away with murder if he wanted to.

  Check this out. For years, Clapper had been bringing the bus on Thursdays so he could hit Wholesome Food on his way home. This little routine was his way of proving himself normal and reliable (oh, and humble) even after his emergence as a gadabout and money-machine. And he loved to rub in the normal reliable thing by describing how Ann transformed his humble purchases into her catfish-in-cornmeal batter on Friday, her ziti with fennel sausage on Saturday—like I needed the fucking menu. But the home-shot here was Clapper the well-fed, well-regulated homebody versus old Stan in solitary lockdown wolfing his PizzaIndianChinese.

  So it’s a Thursday, Clapper departs on schedule (“Arnie Fucking Cloud has left the building”) and goes to the grocery store (where they probably had a fucking greeter waiting for him in the parking lot) but comes back to the Bozarts on his way home. He places a large brown sack brimming with greens on the carpet outside Rose’s door, raps twice, and steals away. Seconds later her arm darts out and snatches the bag inside.

  Stan, appalled. Stan, shocked, really, by the utter shamelessness of it. Poor Ann. The Clapper was no longer even trying to conceal his business with Rose, he was openly, brazenly keeping the girl. An old-fashioned term, I grant you, yet here was your basic old-fashioned bargain, no? The sort of skincrawling setup you expect from some shabby American sultan, the Manhattan real estate magnate with terrible hair, or from the Hollywood mogul with no hair at all.

  The groceries, which would soon prove a weekly occurrence (Thursdays With Arnie) were bad enough. The real clincher came when I overheard the fuller extent of his “charity.”

  “They need to talk to you about the rent check, Arnold,” said Rose.

  “What’s the problem, hon?”

  “She says you forgot to sign it. Details, details, huh?”

  “Oh Christ, Rosie, what a jerk I am. Why didn’t they just call me?”

  In the ensuing dead air, I pictured (though within earshot, I was necessarily out of sight) his Rosie shrugblushing uncomfortably, for her name was on the lease so naturally they called her, not her sugar daddy.

  “Well, whatever. I’ll send them another check.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault, Rosie. Me sorry.”

  Cute, Clapper—baby talk, no less. And I just knew he was doing the thing he does with his moustache and eyebrows, a sort of comic squint where the three strips of fur converge around his schnozz like a convention of caterpillars. Cute cute cute.

  The hell with them. The girl had used me and excused me, and so had my buddy Hags. I wouldn’t even sue for custody of that faithless cur—the hell with him too. Stanley Noseworthy doesn’t stand by anyone who doesn’t stand by Stanley Noseworthy.

  The irony was knowing Wade Boggs was home eating chicken (Debbi’s chicken parmesan on Friday? Debbi’s chicken cacciatore on Saturday?—for Debbi had stood by her man) while waiting for the Hall of Fame to call. Or no, issuing a statement: Wade Boggs does not wait for phone calls from any Halls of Fame that do not want Wade Boggs.

  But they did want him, of course. You spray 3000 hits around the old ballyard and you do not wind up in solitary lockdown. Simple as that.

  As that false spring gave way to an oppressive August, I had to wonder how much worse it could get for me. Would The Pizza Express start refusing to take my calls? Would Hargrove order Joe the Janitor to clog the toilets again? Or would I hear more pebbles on my window only to find legbreakers from the credit card consortium milling in the parking lot?

  Sadly, it was way worse than any of that. It was real.

  My mom was sick for a long time before her doctor finally became interested in finding out why. She trusted this guy (her whole generation trusted doctors, treated them like deities) and her reassurances reassured me. I assumed her relaxed attitude—“It’s no big deal, honey,” she would say—was based on tests, and expert analysis.

  She had bounced back nicely from Big Al’s death, finding all sorts of ways to “get into the swim,” as she put it. True, Lisa gave her an initial push, but soon enough she was leaping into the water with abandon. She was cannonballing off bridges!

  She joined so many groups (reading, knitting, art appreciation) and had so many regular “days” (yoga, Bingo, Hospice Helpers) that she barely had time to sleep. How could her stomachaches be a big deal with the energy she had?

  And the joy. She was happy, no longer lonely. She went to restauran
ts with “Lars” and to a movie with “Sexy Rexy, a spring chicken of 68.” They were hitting on my mom, and she was flattered by the attention. It was all right by her, so long as we understood she would never let it “go anywhere.” Come on, Ma, we both urged, let it go somewhere.

  Before it could, she found herself up against it. And before I got used to the idea she was even at risk, she was gone, at 74. Ever since Big Al died, she had been turning up the heat on her plea to see me “settled” before she too checked out. 80 was when she planned on doing that; 80 was what she figured. Maybe she read it someplace, but in her mind it was a given, a contract. She would not live longer, nor (considering the fun she was having) could she see going sooner. 80 was it.

  “You’ve got six years,” she told me, just before the diagnosis, “but I would not object if you hurried it up a little. I would like to at least meet the rest of my grandchildren.”

  “For an asshole,” Chloe once conceded, “you are unusually considerate and loving toward your mother.” Well, of course. She was my mom. Now, six full years ahead of schedule, she was gone. Something fundamental was taken from me, the literal fundament, and something extraneous was given as a direct result. Money.

  They were never rich, they were just okay. That was Big Al’s phrase for it, “We’re okay,” by which he meant the mortgage was paid and they had enough to keep eating through their old age. If the brake pads on the Focus needed replacing, they would not have to sweat the bill at Mighty Motors. It was the house (or the mortgage release, the amity button atop the newel post) which translated into money, since they had bought it 45 years ago.

  During the weeks I spent back in Teaneck disposing of the “contents” (selling off the furniture, carting endless loads of clothing to the dump and the Salvation Army, combing through an attic and cellar stocked with family memories) I did a lot of crying. I cried for Mom and, belatedly, for Big Al. So much of him came back to me through the ordinary objects he left behind. There was the fishing rod I gave him, which he pretended to love yet never once used. There was his solitaire deck with the naked ladies, his Sinatra records. His stuff.