Morningside Heights

by Joshua Henkin

  “How are you this morning, Professor?”

  Spence regarded her appraisingly.

  “Ginny came for an interview,” Pru said. “I’m going to hire someone in case help is needed.”

  “Why would she need my help? She looks able to me.”

  “I’m able enough, Professor, but there are lots of things I don’t know. You’ll have to be patient with me.”

  “Patience is my forte,” Spence said, pronouncing the word like fort, which, he would have told Ginny, was the correct way to pronounce it. Pru wasn’t so convinced patience was Spence’s forte. He’d never demonstrated much patience when, for instance, people mispronounced forte or any number of other words they continued to mispronounce and he continued to pronounce correctly. “Do you play cards?”

  “Do I play cards? I tell my son he spends too much time on the computer, and he tells me I spend too much time on bridge.”

  “I don’t play bridge,” Spence said. He spoke as if this were a matter of principle, but then everything was a matter of principle with him. He was always saying De gustibus non est disputandum, but nothing was a matter of taste to Spence, including the uttering of that phrase, which, he believed, should be uttered in Latin.

  He was staring at the cross around Ginny’s neck. “Darling,” Pru said, trying to distract him. “Spence is an atheist,” she explained.

  “I’ve met a few of those.”

  “The Christians are all right,” Spence said. “They made some great works of art.” He told Ginny about Michelangelo and El Greco, about Rembrandt’s famous paintings of biblical scenes from the New Testament and the Old.

  “So you see?” Ginny said. “The Bible’s good for something.” And when Spence didn’t respond she said, “The professor can have his beliefs, and I can have mine.”

  Spence excused himself. He had tasks to attend to, work to do.

  “So that was the professor.”

  “You met him in the morning,” Pru said. “As the day wears on, he becomes less alert.”

  “I know all about sundowning.”

  Pru hated that term. Though really what she hated was the fact itself, the light in Spence’s face diminishing with the day’s sunlight. A bad day from six months ago was a good day now, and how he behaved in the evening would, in another six months, be how he would act in the light of day.

  “Does he need help using the toilet?”

  “Sometimes.” She had to remind him to go to the bathroom. He was starting to urinate in his pants. “Is that a problem?”

  “It’s embarrassing for him, I assume.”

  “Yes.” If things went the way they inevitably would, he would grow less embarrassed. Embarrassment served no purpose, but it also made Spence who he was—modest, fastidious, always taking good care—and now it was fading. He still hadn’t soiled himself, still hadn’t defecated in his pants, but that would come, too, she understood. “I’m just saying he won’t always be so easy.”

  “I don’t expect him to be. But I liked him. He said what he thought. He’s a direct man.”

  “Sometimes too direct.”

  “He has a sense of humor. And he likes to play cards.”

  “He likes to win at cards.”

  “I’m the same way.” When she was a girl, Ginny said, she would cry when she lost at board games. And she could never admit when she made a mistake; she would trip and fall and say she’d done it on purpose. “Rafe has some of that in him, too. Too much pride, is what I say. He’s inherited all my worst qualities.”

  Pru stood up. Another candidate was coming soon. “I have one last question for you.”

  Ginny waited.

  “Are you strong?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Because Spence would need a cane soon. And after that, he would need a wheelchair. Because his caregiver would have to push him over curbs and potholes and up and down ramps.

  “I grew up with three older sisters,” Ginny said.

  So what, Pru thought. She had grown up with an older brother, and it hadn’t made her strong.

  “We fought all the time,” Ginny said. “We scratched and bit. I don’t suppose you have a shot put.”

  Pru just looked at her.

  “Even if you did, I couldn’t make any promises. It’s been a long time.”

  “You did the shot put?”

  “Back in high school, I was an average shot-putter on a below-average team.” Ginny stood up. “Okay,” she said, “I’m going to show you I’m still strong.” She told Pru to get down on the floor.

  Pru hesitated for a moment. Then she lowered herself to the floor. She lay facedown like a dead person, and she could smell the rug, feel the fibers pressed to her lips.

  Ginny lifted her in the air. She was carrying her around the living room, holding her like a sack of grain. How long was Pru suspended there? Five seconds? Maybe ten? Looking back, she felt as if she’d been held aloft the whole interview.

  Then Ginny was gone, and when Pru opened the door for the next candidate, she said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve already given the job to someone else.”

  15

  Three days a week, Ginny would come in the morning and stand outside the bathroom while Spence was getting dressed. “Do you need help, Professor?”

  “No one’s helping me get dressed.” Through the door came the clanking of his belt and the clomping of his shoes like the sound of horse hooves.

  “Well, I’m around, in case you need me.”

  “I know you’re around. I can hear you right through the door. Can’t you see I’m in the bathroom?”

  Most of the time, Spence would come out properly dressed, but sometimes his shirt would be unbuttoned or his shoelaces untied, and Ginny would say, “Here, Professor, let me make some adjustments.” He tried to appear resentful, but Pru could tell it was just a show, and Ginny, too, seemed to enjoy the air of amicable combat.

  Spence wasn’t really teaching anymore, but so far, the department was allowing him to keep up pretenses. He would stand at the lectern as a sage presence while his TAs did the teaching for him.

  In the foyer lay his emergency alert. Pru hated that emergency alert, the sight of Spence with a chain around his neck, like a criminal, or a cow.

  “Okay, Professor, on with your ball and chain.” Ginny was good at mimicking Spence’s exasperation and taking it on as her own. Most of the time he didn’t seem bothered by the alert, but when a colleague would visit he’d button his shirt, like a man with a comb-over patting his hair down.

  A couple of hours in the morning, a couple of hours in the late afternoon: the rest of the day Spence was alone. But Pru was going to lose Ginny if she didn’t give her more hours, so she hired her full-time, five days a week.

  A few times, Spence convinced Ginny to join him for lunch at the Faculty Club, but Ginny was uncomfortable at the Faculty Club, a black woman from Jamaica among the white professors. “It’s meant for faculty,” she told Pru, and when Pru said, “It’s meant for faculty and their guests,” Ginny made clear she preferred to eat elsewhere.

  One time, seeing Ginny stationed outside Spence’s office, a secretary said, “You should go inside,” but Ginny just smiled and said, “I’m fine out here.” Another time, Spence himself invited her in, but Ginny said, “I don’t want to cramp your style, Professor. People will be coming by for your office hours.” Once, when Spence suggested she come inside, Ginny said, “How about you teach me some Shakespeare, Professor,” but Spence just stared down at the book in front of him, a book, it turned out, he’d written himself, and didn’t know what to say.

  * * *

  —

  “Tell me about Rafe,” Pru said to Ginny one day.

  “What’s there to tell you?” At the moment, Ginny said, Rafe was doing his homework. At least, she hoped he was. If Rafe
wanted to go to medical school, he would have to work harder.

  “He’ll have time to work harder,” Pru said. “He’s only a child.”

  “If he’s only a child, then why is he talking about curing hemophilia?” Rafe wanted to cure hemophilia because he had hemophilia himself. Born a decade earlier, he might have died of AIDS. Now the blood supply was clean. But there was still danger: a trip, a fall, a shard of glass. Paradoxically, hemophilia had served Rafe well: it had made him more cautious. “Rafe wants to cure hemophilia so he can get a tattoo.”

  “If he cures hemophilia, he deserves one.”

  “Not if you ask me.”

  But that was the point: no one was going to ask Ginny, certainly not Rafe. “So when do I get to meet this son of yours?”

  “You’ll meet him when you meet him,” Ginny said, which made Pru think it wouldn’t happen soon.

  * * *

  —

  But the next day, a buzz came from downstairs. A teenager, rangy and handsome, stamped his feet against the floor. “Rafe’s a mud magnet,” Ginny said. “Remove your shoes, young man.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Rafe said. He was narrower-faced than Ginny—he was narrower in general—though his feet were tremendous; they reminded Pru of puppies’ paws. His eyes were hazel, lighter than Ginny’s, and his chin tapered to a point. But he looked like his mother, the way he held himself gently spooled, that air of self-containment.

  “Rafe came to meet me,” Ginny said. “I want him seeing other parts of the city.”

  “Mom,” Rafe said, “do you have to talk about me so much?”

  “Would you rather I didn’t talk about you?”

  “Probably.” A frozen-yogurt card stuck out of Rafe’s shirt pocket.

  “There’s someone I want to introduce you to,” Ginny said. She took Rafe into the kitchen. “Professor, this is my son, Rafe. He’s come all the way from Brooklyn to meet you.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Rafe said, and there it was again, that lilting formality Rafe shared with his mother, the formality that reminded Pru of Spence.

  * * *

  —

  “I owe you an apology,” Ginny said the next morning. “I can’t just invite a stranger into your home.”

  “Rafe’s not a stranger.”

  “In that case,” Ginny said, “might he be able to come in the morning too?” Summer was beginning soon, and Rafe would be at a chess camp on the Upper West Side. The camp didn’t start until ten, and Ginny didn’t want Rafe wandering alone around the neighborhood.

  “What about after camp?” Pru said. “He shouldn’t be wandering alone around the neighborhood then either.” It would be nice, she said, for Spence to get to know Rafe. She had a feeling they would like each other.

  * * *

  —

  Now, when Pru returned from work, Rafe would be reading a book in the living room while Ginny was in the bedroom with Spence.

  “Is that a chess book you’re reading?”

  Rafe looked up at her.

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing this summer? Learning how to play chess?”

  “I don’t read about chess,” Rafe said. “I play it.” He took out a folding chessboard and removed the embedded pieces from the green felt. “My mother wants me to get a chess scholarship to college.”

  “Would you turn it down?”

  “I’m not even sure there are chess scholarships.”

  “Maybe your mother’s kidding you.”

  “Then you don’t know my mother.” Half the time Rafe thought his mother was kidding him she wasn’t kidding him at all.

  “Tell me something,” Pru said. “Don’t you like chess?”

  Rafe shrugged. “It’s kind of beautiful.” He examined the chess pieces in his hand. He reminded Pru of a gemologist, those Hasidim in the Diamond District with their precious stones. She said, “Do you think the pieces are beautiful?”

  “They’re beautiful enough. I meant more what they can do.” Rafe grabbed a rook between his thumb and forefinger. “My chess teacher thinks chess is elegance in motion.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think ice hockey is elegance in motion.” Rafe had a friend at chess camp who played ice hockey, and now Rafe wanted to play ice hockey, too. In fact, he seemed to want to play ice hockey right now, because he rose from his chair and slid across the floor on his socked feet.

  “Have you asked your mother whether you can play ice hockey?”

  “What’s the point? She thinks I have hemophilia.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Oh, I have it, all right. I just don’t see why it makes a difference.”

  “Hockey’s a violent sport,” Pru said, recalling for Rafe that old joke: I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.

  “I wonder if there’s ever been a chess fight.” Rafe had a knight and a bishop squaring off on the board, one on a light square, the other on a dark square, assessing each other like action figures.

  “So your ice-hockey-playing friend—does he also have a mother who makes him go to chess camp?”

  “Everyone has a mother who makes them go to chess camp. If there weren’t mothers making their kids go to chess camp, there wouldn’t be any chess camps.” Rafe paused. “The problem is, I think I like chess.”

  “Don’t worry,” Pru said. “I won’t tell your mother.”

  “Tell her what you want. She finds out everything anyway.”

  “And that book,” Pru said, pointing at Rafe’s lap. “Are you reading it for high school?”

  Rafe laughed. “Now I know why my mother likes you. All you two think about is high school.”

  “Actually, it’s been ages since I thought about high school. The day my daughter graduated, I stopped thinking about it.”

  Rafe held up the book. “The professor gave it to me. It’s by some guy named Wittgenstein.”

  Pru said, “Oy.”

  “I’m not sure the professor understands him anymore. I know I don’t.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I never understood him. Come on, Rafe, school’s out. Your mother won’t like me saying this, but you don’t need to be reading Wittgenstein on your summer break. Teach me some chess strategy. Help me impress my friends.”

  Rafe told her about pawn structure, how to use a pawn to pry open a locked position, how to array pawns as a duo, side by side. The player who controlled the most space was the player who controlled the game. E4, e5, d4, and d5: those were the most important spaces. There were cramping moves and freeing moves. A cramping move restricted your opponent’s space, and a freeing move opened up space for you. “Don’t lock in your bishops behind your pawns.” A bishop stuck behind one of its own pawns was worth less than an unobstructed knight. A knight was worth three pawns, as was a bishop, but a rook was worth five pawns, a queen nine.

  “How about you give me an extra queen?” Pru said. “And a couple of extra bishops while you’re at it.” When Sarah was a girl, they’d allowed her to play Scrabble with ten letters while they played with only seven.

  “You’ll have the same number of queens as I have. How else will you learn?”

  Spence and Ginny came down the hall.

  “Professor,” Rafe said, “do you want to play?”

  There was a competitive gleam in Spence’s eye. Boggle, Probe, checkers, Casino: he always played to win. And he’d passed down that competitiveness to his children. When Arlo was five, he sat down to the chessboard on one of his visits, and after a few turns, he swept his hand across the board and knocked over all of his father’s pieces. “I won!” he said. “Beginner’s luck!”

  “Here, I’ll help you,” Rafe said. He moved Spence’s bishop, saying, “Look there, Professor, you’ve gained a tempo.”

  Spence nodded as if to say h
e knew as much.

  Rafe explained what the Center Counter was. Beginning chess players were always giving check, but check wasn’t important; only checkmate was. There was a saying he’d learned at chess camp. Monkey sees a check, monkey gives a check. “Don’t be a monkey,” Rafe said.

  “The professor doesn’t understand you,” Ginny said. “I don’t understand you. A good teacher doesn’t show off.”

  But Rafe was too busy talking about pawn structure to care what his mother said. He was extolling the virtues of passed pawns and noting the dangers of isolated pawns. There were backward pawns and hanging pawns and doubled pawns and pawn chains, and Spence, perched above Rafe on a chair, was wearing a look of contemplation, saying, “Sounds good to me.”

  Now Rafe was using terms like shrinking the square and skewer and fork and absolute pin and bishop sacrifice. “Your turn, Professor. Show me your best move.”

  But Spence was becoming tired, so Rafe lifted him from his chair.

  “It would be nice to have Rafe here all the time,” Pru said. Watching Rafe accompany Spence to the bedroom, a step behind him, a step to the side, his arms out to catch him if he fell, Pru wasn’t worried he would fall and, if he did fall, Rafe would catch him. And with that realization came another one: she was worried about Spence all the time. Ginny was strong, but Rafe was even stronger. What if Spence fell when Ginny wasn’t there? Would she be able to lift him?

  * * *

  —

  The next afternoon, Pru took Ginny and Rafe up to Columbia’s campus. Spence came along, too, and as they approached Philosophy Hall, he seemed to inflate. “Here we are,” Pru said. “The house that Spence built.”

  A few teenagers were playing Hacky Sack in the grass.

  “I like this college,” Rafe said.

  “You and the rest of the world,” said Ginny.

  “Seriously, is this what people do in college? Play games in the grass? I’m into this place.”