Morningside Heights

by Joshua Henkin

  “But that’s not what we’re doing,” Claire said. They were simply pursuing different careers. Claire was applying to medical school; Theresa was joining her family’s real estate business; Marie had lined up an art gallery job.

  But what about Pru?

  “Pru doesn’t have to do anything,” Theresa said. “She’s a star-fucker.”

  “I’m not a star-fucker,” Pru said. “I married him.”

  “I assume that also involves fucking him.”

  Pru said, “How much money do you think an English professor makes?”

  “It’s not about the money,” Marie said. “It’s about the acclaim.”

  Claire said, “If I had a husband like Spence, I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.”

  Pru didn’t know what Claire was talking about. She loved Spence—she was thrilled to be married to him—but that didn’t mean she didn’t have to worry.

  They started to meet every few weeks, rotating from one woman’s living room to the next. Networking, Theresa called it, though mostly they sat on love seats and drank coffee and ate éclairs.

  Marie said, “I could get you a job at an art gallery.”

  Pru didn’t want to offend Marie, but she wasn’t interested in the art business. She was married to Spence, the red-diaper baby, and his disdain for commerce had rubbed off on her.

  One day, they met at Pru and Spence’s apartment, and Pru baked a pineapple upside-down cake and a banana cream pie.

  “These are amazing,” Marie said. “You should become a pastry chef.”

  Pru did like to bake. But she could just as easily have become a paleontologist: she liked fossils too. She was good at a lot of things, but she wasn’t outstanding at any one thing, and she feared she didn’t have the drive to be outstanding. That was one of the things she liked about Spence. His own drive and single-mindedness made her feel ambitious vicariously.

  * * *

  —

  One day, Marie pointed at Pru’s stomach and said, “What’s that bump I see?”

  Claire said, “We’ve been talking about this, Pru, and we know you’re not supposed to ask a girl if she’s pregnant, but we’re going out on a limb here.”

  “Yes!” Pru said. “I am!” She was relieved, finally, to be rid of her secret.

  Everyone hugged her and made toasts, though they wouldn’t let her drink, of course.

  “Look at Mrs. Spence Robin,” Theresa said, “standing before us with child!”

  “My last name’s not Robin,” Pru said. “I kept my maiden name.”

  Claire said, “If I were married to Spence I’d be taking his name in an instant.”

  “I’m my own person,” Pru said.

  “Of course you are,” Theresa said. “We’re just saying.”

  * * *

  —

  As Pru’s stomach grew, there was a chariness around her, almost an embarrassment, when the rest of them talked about their careers. When Claire would complain about organic chemistry, when Theresa would discuss real estate commissions, when Marie would describe a painting she’d sold, someone would ask Pru about her Lamaze class, and someone else would ask for her opinion on breast-feeding, and someone else still would ask whether she thought the baby was a boy or a girl, and before she could answer them, Marie was saying, “I think it’s a boy,” and Claire was saying, “It’s definitely a girl,” and Theresa was saying, “Which one is it, a boy if you carry low or a boy if you carry high?” and Pru said, “Can we stop talking about my pregnancy already?”

  “What else should we talk about?” Theresa said, as if there could possibly be anything else.

  “Don’t patronize me,” Pru said. “I still have a brain.”

  “Of course you do,” Claire said.

  “You’re the smartest of all of us,” Theresa said, and now they were patronizing her in a different way, reminding her of a seminar paper she’d written that the professor had said was publishable, and Claire mentioned Pru’s GRE scores, which somehow had gotten out.

  * * *

  —

  The delivery was by C-section, the recovery difficult and slow. Sarah didn’t nurse well; she bit Pru’s breast, and Pru would scream out in pain. Spence would kiss Sarah on the forehead, would coo, “Please don’t bite Mommy,” and then he’d hand her back to Pru to be bitten again.

  Sarah didn’t sleep well, either. She cried a lot.

  “It’s probably colic,” the pediatrician said, and Pru said, “What do you mean, probably?” and the pediatrician had to admit that colic was speculative: who knew why babies did what they did?

  Sarah became a toddler and she learned to sleep, but there was still daytime to worry about.

  Pru, meanwhile, was studying French. Between the cost of the baby-sitter and the cost of the class, these were the most expensive French lessons on the planet. But she needed to learn French because Spence had a sabbatical coming up, and they were going to spend it in Bordeaux.

  She started to do community theater, and she joined productions of The Bald Soprano and Six Characters in Search of an Author. On opening night Spence was in the front row, holding a bouquet of flowers. But the productions weren’t good, certainly compared with the plays she used to act in. Community theater was democratic: the director cast whoever came along. Though who was she to be a snob? She was the faculty wife, with her Ionesco and her Pirandello, fancying herself as part of the avant-garde. It was a vanity project, and afterward, when she saw the photos Spence had taken, she was forced to look away.

  * * *

  —

  Still, she loved spending time with Sarah, the trips in the morning to the Hungarian Pastry Shop for hot chocolate and brioche. Afterward, they would go to Spence’s office for lunch, and Spence would dandle Sarah on his lap, a bib for her, a napkin for him, his necktie slung over his shoulder.

  They spent Augusts in Vermont, where in the morning Pru would read a novel and Sarah would play in the pool with the neighbors’ kids. One year, Pru proposed that Arlo come visit, but when Spence suggested it to Linda, she refused. July was Spence’s month; the rest of the year Arlo was with her, except for Christmas and spring break.

  Pru didn’t care: she was happy for it to be just the three of them. In the afternoon, she would drink iced tea and Sarah would drink lemonade, and they would wait for Spence to come home from the library. Then the evening’s activities could begin, Sarah’s wet bathing suit draped over the clothesline, Pru having showered and put on some lipstick, looking lovely in her yellow sundress. “We have wheels, we can go anywhere,” Spence said. Into town for dinner: fish and chips or pizza, Sarah’s choice. Tuesday nights with the Singing Lady, Sarah installed on the pavement outside the old fire station singing along to “This Land Is Your Land” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” while Pru and Spence stood in back, singing, too. Afterward, they would head to Double Dip, where their hot fudge made a frozen coat around their ice cream. Those August weeks, when time stretched out, supple as a rubber band: the days unspooling and unspooling and still there were more.

  * * *

  —

  Eventually, though, Sarah started school, and Pru took a job in Barnard development. The work was tolerable, the hours good, and her salary, while low, was still a salary. And being at Barnard, Columbia’s sister school, allowed Spence’s burnish to rub off on her. She would cross College Walk and hear people whispering.

  During lunch, she would stop by Sarah’s nursery school and watch her eating with her new friends, the people who had replaced her. Sometimes Spence would join her, and they’d stand with their noses pressed to the glass. “Oh, Spence, our daughter’s growing up.”

  She thought she’d stay in development for a few years, then try something else. She’d planned on being a professor, and now she was a supplicant, going to donors with her hat in her hand. She told hersel
f she was supporting Barnard, supporting the free flow of ideas, but the pitch letter she’d written, the prospective donor she’d taken to lunch: it all made her feel vaguely ashamed.

  * * *

  —

  Meanwhile, Spence won a Mellon, and another Guggenheim. One day, the MacArthur Foundation called.

  “It seems I’ve won a MacArthur.”

  “Darling, we have to celebrate!”

  But Spence didn’t like to celebrate his accomplishments. He hated calling attention to himself.

  “How much money is it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  The next day, he looked in the Times. “Three hundred thousand dollars! Good God!”

  “We could buy an apartment with that money.”

  “Why in the world?” Spence had grown up on the Lower East Side, where everyone hated the landlords. Now his wife was telling him to become one?

  But he relented in the end, and they bought a two-bedroom apartment off Central Park West. Years later, when Spence got sick, that apartment was the only thing keeping them out of the poorhouse. Who Really Wrote Shakespeare? had spent a few weeks on the best-seller list, but by the time Spence got sick the royalties were gone, as was the money from his MacArthur. Sarah had gone to private school, then to Reed, and for years they’d been sending money to Linda to help take care of Arlo.

  * * *

  —

  Now, though, Pru wanted to celebrate.

  “You should throw him a MacArthur party,” Camille said.

  “He won’t let me.”

  “Make it a surprise.”

  Camille lived a few blocks from Pru, and she took care of the shopping—the food, the alcohol, the flowers—while Pru sent out the invitations.

  On the day of the party, Pru brought Spence into the apartment, and several dozen guests materialized from behind the furniture, everyone shouting, “Surprise!” Someone started to sing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” and Spence turned pink.

  “Speech!” someone called out.

  “I’m feeling shy,” Spence said. “Would you mind if I didn’t?”

  “The man who lectures every day to all those rapt undergraduates?”

  “Pru can speak for me.”

  But Pru, standing beside the piano, holding her glass of champagne, didn’t know what to say.

  “Cat steal your tongue?” someone said, and Camille said, “That’s right, let’s hear from the other half of the power couple!”

  Finally, Pru raised her glass. “To Spence Robin, my old Shakespeare professor, not to mention my husband. For winning a genius grant!” She reached into the piano bench and removed a framed copy of the Times article with Spence’s name highlighted.

  But afterward, once everyone had left, Spence walked about the apartment, looking subdued. Someone’s cigarette bobbed in a beer bottle. He turned on the water in the sink. “It was nice of you to throw that party.”

  “But you wish I didn’t.”

  “It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t have to announce it to everyone.”

  “Announce your MacArthur, darling? It was in the newspapers. Besides, they’re our friends.”

  “And why did you call it a genius grant?”

  “It’s what everyone calls it.”

  “I’m not a genius. I’m just a smart enough guy who’s gotten some lucky breaks.”

  “You’re not giving yourself enough credit.” She apologized for having thrown the party, and he apologized, too. If she wanted to be proud of him, she should be proud. He certainly was proud of her.

  But she was too proud of him. She was thirty-five when he won his MacArthur, already settled into her life, but even at twenty-five, a few months removed from graduate school, she could see what she was becoming. She would sit around the living room with Theresa, Claire, and Marie, poking fun at the M-R-S-es. But she was an M-R-S herself. Spence’s success was her success too. There was no separating them.

  Part II

  5

  In the months after Sarah left for medical school, Pru recalled Mark Twain’s words, The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco, and she thought, What about New York in 2005? Spence got cold much more easily now. He would walk around the apartment with a sweater on; at night he needed an extra blanket.

  He said, “I bet it’s the coldest October on record.”

  But the temperature was about average for October. Maybe it was just Spence, who needed more insulation than he used to. There was a reason old people moved to Florida.

  Though whom was she kidding? She was fifty-one and Spence was fifty-seven; they were squarely middle-aged.

  Then why did Spence seem less alert? Why did he need eight hours of sleep a night when he used to need only five? He would nod off reading The New York Review of Books.

  She came home one day and said, “I’m thinking of getting us a sunlamp.”

  “Why in the world?”

  “Because they raise people’s spirits. It’s been documented.”

  “There’s a document out there that can prove almost anything.”

  She felt defeated by his resistance. It was folly, besides, because she couldn’t get him to sit in the actual sun, much less under a sunlamp. “Well, you may not be depressed, but I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Sarah’s flown off to UCLA.” It was as if saying these words allowed her to feel them, and the depth of her isolation was cast in bright light.

  * * *

  —

  They’d been invited to a New Year’s Eve party, at the home of Spence’s colleague, but Spence just sat there, refusing to get dressed. “I hate the Upper East Side.”

  “Come on, darling. No one’s asking you to move there.”

  “You know what else I hate? Tuxedos.”

  And she hated evening gowns. But the invitation had said formal attire. She put on a long dress and a pair of slingback pumps, and she found Spence’s tuxedo secreted in the closet.

  “I look ridiculous,” he said, seeing himself in his red bow tie. But his black bow tie was nowhere to be found, and this was what he’d unearthed from his tuxedo box.

  Spence’s colleague’s building was made of glass, and as they ascended in the elevator they could see the sparkle of the East River, the Pepsi-Cola sign blinking at them. The planes were descending to LaGuardia, casting their shadows across Queens.

  Outside the apartment, people were taking off their shoes. “Doesn’t it defeat the purpose,” Pru said, “everyone in their tuxedos and evening gowns walking around in stockinged feet?”

  Outside in the cold, Spence had appeared sprightly and alert, but in the warmth of the building he had grown lugubrious. His face was flushed, and he was tugging on his bow tie, like a horse struggling with his bit.

  “Let’s get some food into you,” Pru said. “Let’s get some nourishment into us both.”

  At the entrance to the apartment, they ran into a colleague of Spence’s. “And who might you be?” the man said. “Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers?”

  “We’re Spence Robin and Pru Steiner,” Spence said.

  “Well, yes,” said the colleague, who knew Spence well: they had offices down the hall from each other. “I meant for tonight.”

  A woman had on knee socks and pink barrettes; her husband had spray-painted his hair green. Still others were decked out as actual people. There was an Elvis Presley, and a Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. A man was dressed as Vice President Cheney and another man was dressed as Alan Greenspan.

  “Blast from the past?” a woman said to Spence, pointing at a couple dressed as the Captain & Tennille. But it wasn’t a blast from Spence’s past: he had no idea who the Captain & Tennille were.

  “I don’t get it,” Pru s
aid. “Is this New Year’s Eve or Halloween?”

  “You said it was formal attire,” Spence said.

  “No, Spence, you said it was formal attire. I didn’t even see the invitation.”

  Spence searched for the invitation in his jacket pockets. Now his pockets hung at his sides, like donkey ears.

  Pru removed the envelope from his breast pocket. “Well, that explains it.” At the top of the invitation were the words Come costumed in your most festive attire. “Spence, we were invited to a costume party!”

  “Give me that,” Spence said. He held a club soda in one hand, the invitation in the other, and he was reading the words over and over again. “I can’t believe I misread it.”

  “That’s okay, darling. For you, a tuxedo is a costume.”

  Spence just stood there, and now he’d placed his club soda on the floor and was examining the invitation even more closely. “This is so embarrassing.”

  She tried to object.

  “Don’t tell me it’s not embarrassing if I think it is.”

  She pointed to the words on the invitation, which Spence was parsing with such care. Festive and formal: it was easy to get them confused. And the phrase come costumed was ambiguous. They were all costumed just by being dressed.

  But Spence wouldn’t be consoled. “We might as well have come naked for all that we stick out.”

  “Darling, it’s New Year’s Eve. Let’s just have a good time.”

  “I can’t have a good time.” And he spent the next hour moving listlessly among the guests, lagging several steps behind her.

  “At least eat something,” she said. “The food’s outstanding.”

  He bit into a carrot stick and said, “You’re right, it’s an outstanding carrot stick. It’s the most delectable carrot stick I’ve ever tasted.” He deposited the half-eaten carrot stick onto the table.

  He announced that he wanted to leave.