Morningside Heights

by Joshua Henkin

  “That’s right,” Pru said.

  “But Camille was with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you went to the Knicks game with her.”

  “You must have misunderstood me.”

  Ginny stood there for several seconds. “I could have sworn…” Then she went into the bedroom to check on Spence.

  30

  Over dinner with Camille Pru said, “I told Ginny I went to the Knicks game with you.”

  “But you didn’t,” Camille said. “You went to the Knicks game with Walter.”

  “Come on, Camille. Don’t you think I know that?”

  “You sound like a schoolgirl sneaking around.”

  “I think I like him,” Pru said.

  “Of course you like him. He’s a likable guy.”

  “You’ve been doing this for years, Camille. The last time I kissed someone new, it was Spence, and I wasn’t even twenty-five.”

  “Kissing’s pretty much the same at fifty-five.”

  Was it? And what if she and Walter ended up naked? “I love Spence,” she said. “I’ll never love anyone as much as him.”

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  “You must think I’m awful.”

  “I don’t.”

  Pru took a sip of water. “You were trying to set me up with him, weren’t you, Camille?”

  “What difference does it make what I was trying to do? Tell me what you think of him.”

  “He’s different from Spence, that’s for sure. It’s not that he’s low-brow, exactly. He’s just not as buttoned-up. You should have seen him yelling at those basketball players. With Spence, there’s always dignity to consider. Walter’s a little zany. He bikes in his hardhat to work.”

  “And he takes care of his ex-wife. Whatever else, he’s loyal.”

  “Unless he’s just a sucker.” Even if he was…Pru could have used a sucker for once. She let her hands drop to the table, and some tzatziki splattered and nearly got on her shirt. “My head’s in the clouds, Camille. I left my phone on mute, and Spence wandered off and could have gotten killed. I probably wanted him to. I haven’t even kissed Walter yet, and I already feel like I’m cuckolding Spence. And I’m cuckolding him twice over because I’m hiring Ginny to take care of him while Walter and I go out on a date. And Elaine’s there tonight so I can talk to you about cuckolding him. His IRA is paying for my meal. And here I am, carrying on, when I don’t even know if he likes me.”

  “Of course he likes you. Why else would he be spending so much time with you?”

  “Maybe he finds me comforting. Safe.” Again she dropped her hands against the table. “I am a schoolgirl, saying he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not.”

  * * *

  —

  The next night, Walter called. “Did you say your husband taught at Columbia?”

  “That’s right,” Pru said.

  “Spence Robin? In the English department?”

  “Yes.”

  “My younger son, Jeremy, studied literature at Columbia. Maybe he took his class.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t Spence. It’s a big department.” She didn’t want it to be Spence, even if it was only Walter’s son.

  An hour later, Walter called back. “It was him.”

  “Who?”

  “Your husband taught my son. Freshman year, Jeremy took his Shakespeare lecture. He liked it so much, he took a seminar with him. He said he was the best professor he ever had.”

  31

  They sat on a bench in Bryant Park, lacing up their ice skates. Pru had rented hers, but Walter had brought his own skates.

  “So you’re a real skater,” Pru said. “I can’t even skate backward.”

  “And I can’t even skate forward. My daughter-in-law got me these skates. She thought if I owned a pair I might learn to skate. She used to take lessons.”

  “You have a daughter-in-law?” Pru said.

  “Saul, my older son, got married last year.”

  It was a Sunday afternoon in February and there were still the remnants of the holiday crowd. Pru had gotten Ginny to watch Spence again. This time, she made sure to leave her ringer on.

  “Okay,” Walter said, “make way for ducklings.” He wambled toward the rink, and Pru followed him. “You go on without me,” he said. “I don’t want to hold you back.”

  “You’re not holding me back.”

  But he was holding her back, and no amount of politeness could hide it.

  So Pru took off, skating confidently but not too confidently: she didn’t want to show him up. It was true that Walter couldn’t skate forward, but she’d been modest in saying she couldn’t skate backward, and certainly when she skated forward she trafficked nimbly around the rink.

  Walter, meanwhile, was holding on to the side, moving forward like an inchworm. He let go for a second, then grabbed back on.

  “How about you join me?” she said, and she took his hand and they moved slowly around the rink until they got back to where they started.

  Then she was off on her own again. “Slow and steady wins the race!” she called out, but Walter couldn’t hear her from across the rink, and with his palms out in front of him, he simply shrugged.

  She stepped off the ice and got a cup of coffee. She handed him the coffee over the glass, and he took a sip and passed it back to her.

  Her leg had fallen asleep, so she knocked her skates against each other and a chip of ice flew off.

  They moved along the ice, holding hands, Walter with his gloves big as oven mitts. He did a swivel, and now he was grabbing onto the wall. “Maybe the wizard will give me courage.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “If you fall, I’ll pick you up.”

  He skated ahead of her, faster now.

  “You see?” she called out. “You’re a daredevil!” But she’d barely finished speaking before he wiped out, his legs sliding out from under him.

  “Let’s try again,” she said.

  She liked his tight grip, mitten to mitten, hip brushing against hip. His legs slid out like a frog’s, but he managed to right himself.

  Wayworn and footsore, they got off the ice. Walter shook his head from side to side, as if trying to dislodge something. He strung his skates like a yoke around his neck.

  They walked across Bryant Park, past a woman in a diaphanous dress peering into opera glasses. Someone was wearing a T-shirt that read jesus had two dads. A balloon was stuck in a tree, and Pru thought of the Roosevelt Island tram, hanging from the wire like a dead man.

  Outside ’wichcraft, a portraitist sat in front of an easel.

  Walter said, “Let’s be like the other tourists and get our portrait done.”

  Seated beside each other, they posed for the artist. Half an hour passed, and they had the portrait in their hands.

  “Not bad for twenty bucks,” Walter said.

  Pru put the portrait away in her bag.

  She leaned against Walter and kissed him. His mouth tasted like peppermint. She unzipped his parka and rested her fingers against his side; through his sweater she could feel his rib cage. Her legs pressed against his as they kissed. She pulled him close to her.

  * * *

  —

  Back at Walter’s apartment, they kicked off their shoes and toppled into bed. Pru lifted off Walter’s sweater and T-shirt. He unbuttoned her shirt and rolled over on top of her, the bedspread bunched at their feet. Gently, she bit his lip. He lifted her from behind and unclasped her bra.

  * * *

  —

  Now she knew why she’d gotten off the dating track, why she’d married at twenty-four. A few kisses, an hour topless in a man’s bed, set you back to being a teenager.

  Walter lived on 110th and Riverside, and for the next week she got off the s
ubway a stop before campus so she could pass his building. What would she do if she saw him? Duck behind a tree?

  During her lunch hour, she walked down Broadway from 116th to 110th, then back up to campus on the other side of the street, glancing into the restaurants, the hardware stores, wondering if he might be inside. He worked downtown, but maybe he’d taken a sick day. She passed the dry cleaner and thought: does he get his suits cleaned here? She looked at the rows of pressed shirts, thinking one might be his.

  She saw Labradoodles everywhere; she hadn’t realized they were such popular dogs. From down the block, she saw a dog who looked like Albert and her pulse rammed against her throat.

  Walter had said he would call, but he hadn’t called. Or was it she who’d said she would call him?

  Finally, he called, but when she saw his number on the phone she let it go to voicemail.

  He didn’t leave a message.

  He didn’t call that night, or the next morning, but the following night he called again. This time, he left a message, asking her to call him back.

  Just talk to him, she told herself. But she couldn’t get herself to do it.

  32

  She was headed home on 72nd Street when she saw a man pushing a wheelchair who looked so much like Walter she almost called out to him. Then she did call out. “Walter!”

  He didn’t turn around.

  She crossed the street so she could see him from a different angle. It was Walter, indisputably. He was pushing a blond woman in a wheelchair. It was Anne, his ex-wife: Pru was sure of it.

  She watched them from between the parked cars. Walter was bent over, whispering to the woman, so that for a moment their heads resolved into one.

  A bus obscured them, followed by an ambulance, its siren like a threnody. Walter and Anne: they emerged and reemerged from behind the parked cars, moving along the street in the shadows.

  Then they disappeared into an apartment building, plucked from the street as if they hadn’t been there at all.

  * * *

  —

  Did Walter’s ex-wife live only two blocks away? Pru was returning from Fairway one afternoon when she saw Anne in her wheelchair, with her attendant. “Are you Anne?”

  The woman appeared startled. Or maybe it was just the disease. She had the signature tremors of Parkinson’s. Her neck vibrated forward and back.

  “I know your ex-husband,” Pru said. “Walter. He’s a friend of mine.”

  Anne just sat there.

  “And your two sons.”

  “Saul and Jeremy?” Anne’s voice shook. It was hard to make out what she was saying.

  “Your younger son, Jeremy,” Pru said. “He studied Shakespeare with my husband.”

  “Who are you?” Anne said.

  “I’m Pru,” she said. “Pru Steiner.” She took hold of Anne’s hand, and now they were vibrating together. “I’m a friend of Walter’s,” she said again.

  Anne’s face didn’t move. Was it suspicion, or again the disease?

  The attendant took hold of the wheelchair. “Anne has to go,” she said. “We have errands to run.”

  Then they were headed down the block, and Pru just stood there. What had she been hoping to find out?

  * * *

  —

  She showed up unannounced at Walter’s apartment. Even Albert seemed caught off guard.

  “I saw you wheeling your ex-wife,” she said.

  Walter nodded.

  “You never told me she lived two blocks away.”

  “I guess it never came up.”

  “What else hasn’t come up?”

  “A lot of things, I imagine. If we spent more time together, more things would come up.”

  “It’s not so simple, Walter. I’m married. You want me to drop it all and move in with you?”

  “Answering my phone calls would be a start.”

  “What do you suggest I do? Put him in a nursing home?”

  “It’s been done.”

  “Well, I’d never do it. I’m betraying Spence just by standing here.”

  “Come on, Pru. He wouldn’t even understand what was going on between us. He barely speaks.”

  “How would you know?”

  “You told me.”

  “You know nothing about my marriage. You wouldn’t even know what a good marriage is.”

  “Pru, that’s not fair.”

  “Listen to me. Sure, he’s doing terribly, but he’s not a vegetable. You can see for yourself.”

  * * *

  —

  She invited him over one night after Ginny had left and before Elaine was on duty: the changing of the guard.

  “Spence,” she said, “this is my friend Walter Cohen.”

  Walter reached out to shake Spence’s hand, but Spence just sat there.

  “Spence, honey, Walter’s trying to shake your hand.”

  Spence extended his hand to Walter.

  They were sitting in the living room, Pru and Spence on the couch, Walter in an armchair across from them. Spence was wearing pajamas. Pru had tried to dress him, but he’d refused. Now, though, he was at a disadvantage, sitting in his pajamas while they were in their street clothes. “Darling, would you like a sweater?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “He gets cold so easily,” she told Walter.

  Spence tapped his slippers against the floor.

  “How was your day, darling? Did you have a nice time with Ginny?”

  “It was okay.”

  “Walter, why don’t you tell Spence what you do.”

  Walter hesitated.

  “Walter’s a structural engineer,” Pru said. “He helps build buildings so they don’t fall down.”

  Walter told Spence how his firm had engineered Citi Field and had made a bid on the Hudson Yards project. “You were at Columbia, right?”

  “I’m an emeritus professor,” Spence said. Again Pru wished she’d dressed him in a sweater, but she couldn’t force it on him now.

  She went into the kitchen, leaving the two of them alone, and came back with three cups of tea. She took Spence’s hand and just held it. “Should I put on the record player, darling?”

  Spence shook his head.

  “You should probably go,” she told Walter.

  Walter removed a book from his bag. When There’s a Will, There’s a Way. Spence’s book. “My son studied with you,” he said. “He’d like you to inscribe your book for him.” He handed the book to Spence.

  For a moment Spence just stared down at the cover. He reached into his shirt pocket for a pen.

  “I’ll get you a pen, darling.” Pru went into the kitchen and came back with a pen. “Go ahead, darling. You can sign it now.”

  But Spence just sat there.

  She could sign his name for him, the way she’d once tried to write his book. She could guide his hand across the page like someone teaching a child to write, but she wouldn’t subject either of them to that, certainly not in front of Walter.

  Finally, she inscribed the book herself.

  To Jeremy,

  Thank you for taking my class, and for reading my book, and for keeping it safe all these years.

  Best wishes,

  Spence Robin

  Walter called a few hours later. “That didn’t go very well.”

  No, she said, it didn’t.

  “I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “It was my idea, not yours.” She should have been the one apologizing—to both Walter and Spence.

  “I have a proposal for you,” he said.

  She waited.

  “My family owns a cabin in the Berkshires. It’s free the weekend after next. I’d like you to come with me.”

  She didn’t spe
ak.

  “Will you at least think about it?”

  * * *

  —

  Day and night and day again, at work and at lunch, when she slept and when she couldn’t sleep, when she was standing on the street corner waiting for the light to change because if she crossed against the light, she would get run over: it was all she could think about.

  One morning, she put Spence’s diaper on backward. She tripped over a garbage pail at work and nearly injured herself. On 116th and Broadway, she almost did get run over by a car, which would have been one way to solve her problem.

  Meanwhile, a week had passed, and she’d gone back to not answering Walter’s calls. The weekend he’d invited her for came and went, and so she wasn’t going.

  * * *

  —

  She was a few blocks from her building when she saw Walter in the window of a restaurant, sitting across from a pretty woman. A blonde, just like his ex-wife.

  Gentlemen prefer blondes, Pru thought darkly. He was eating spaghetti with clams. He lifted his fork to his mouth. She stood there for a moment, watching them, then rushed down the street.

  * * *

  —

  She waited a couple of days to call him, but when she did, she launched right in. “Well, someone works fast.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I saw you eating at a restaurant. You were on a date.”

  Walter didn’t speak.

  “You’re telling me it wasn’t one?”

  “It was.”

  “You’re going on dates a few blocks away from me?”

  “I didn’t realize you had dibs on the neighborhood.”

  It was early evening, and she walked across 72nd Street to the Hudson. In Riverside Park, dog feces lined the grass. A man, close to ninety, with a sharp triangle of a face, moved along the cobblestones with a walker, patches of beard dispersed across his cheeks like sod.

  When she got home, she called Walter. “I want to go away with you. Is there another weekend when the cabin is free?”