Riverside Drive

by Laura Van Wormer

  There was broken glass all over the bathroom floor. Cassy tried to step over it, reaching up for a washcloth.

  Oh.

  Her stomach lurched dangerously at the sight in the sink. She wet the washcloth at the bathtub faucet, wrung it out, and went back out. “Put it on his forehead,” Sam said, covering the phone with his hand. He was talking to the hospital, Cassy realized.

  She leaned over Michael. He was so old, so wretchedly ill. She wiped his face and hands and went back to rinse out the washcloth in the bathroom. She came back, folding the washcloth, and placed it on his forehead. After a moment she went over to the closet.

  “Okay,” Sam said, hanging up the phone, “an ambulance is coming. I need to let the front desk know.”

  Cassy walked back to the bed, holding a shirt.

  “No,” Sam said, shaking his head.

  Cassy stood there.

  “Don’t—wait. Hold on a minute, will you?” he said into the phone. “No, Cassy. We want him to see the clothes he wore to the hospital.”

  “But—”

  He shook his head again.

  Cassy pressed the shirt to her face.

  Sam explained the situation to the front desk.

  Michael started muttering, rocking his head from side to side.

  Cassy sat down next to him and began to weep.

  “They can’t!” Michael suddenly yelled, sitting bolt upright.

  Cassy grabbed his shoulders. “It’s all right, Michael. It’s only me.”

  His eyes closed and he began to sag. Cassy gently pushed him back down on the pillow and put the washcloth back on his forehead.

  Sam hung up the phone and sat down on the edge of the bed. He reached over Michael to touch Cassy’s arm. “It’s going to be all right,” he murmured.

  “Over there,” Michael said, trying to point to somewhere.

  38

  THE HEARING

  “There’s Cassy,” Harriet said to Amanda. Cassy was struggling with one of the glass doors. She stopped pushing and starting pulling and succeeded in getting it open. “Thank heavens I’ve found you,” she said, coming in. “I’m with them,” she explained to the receptionist, pointing to Harriet and Amanda across the room on the couch. She walked over to them, heels resounding on the linoleum floor. “You wouldn’t believe where I’ve been. I wrote down 6 Lafayette instead of 60.”

  Harriet moved her briefcase so Cassy could sit down. “It’s all right,” she said, “we’ve just been sitting here, waiting.”

  “Mr. Thatcher and a social worker—a Mr. Jones—took Rosanne to the judge’s chambers,” Amanda said, “and then they came out for Mrs. Goldblum.” She looked at her pendant watch. “That was almost an hour ago.”

  Cassy slowly blew out a breath and used both hands to push back the loose strands of hair from her face. “So are we going to the hearing?”

  “I would assume so,” Harriet said, settling back against the couch, checking her watch. She looked over at Cassy and said, in a low voice, “How are you?”

  Cassy looked at her for a moment and then shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure.” She fell back against the couch, crossing her legs. She glanced at Amanda, looked down at her skirt, and smoothed it with her hand. “My husband’s in the hospital,” she explained. Then she looked up at Harriet. “Sam’s been wonderful—I don’t know what I would do without him.” She dropped her eyes back into her lap, slowly shaking her head. “Poor Henry... “She bit her lower lip and then shook her head again. “There’s so much to sort out.”

  Harriet was nodding. “Just try and take it a day at a time,” she said gently.

  Cassy brought her hands up to press the bridge of her nose. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, nodding. “I know,” she said into her hands. “I know.”

  The three women sat there, each with her own thoughts.

  Harriet checked her watch again. “I’ve got to call in to the office,” she said, getting up. She walked over to the receptionist and asked where a pay phone was. “I’ll be out in the hall—around to the right,” she told them.

  “Okay,” Cassy said. She shifted slightly, recrossing her legs toward Amanda. She pulled down on her skirt. “So how are you?”

  Amanda turned her head, drawing a slow, sad smile. “Do you prefer courtesy or the truth?”

  Cassy gave a small laugh, touching at her earring. “Well, I’m about to have a nervous breakdown, does that help?”

  Amanda nodded. “I am not very happy,” she finally said. “I mean that I am, about some things, but about others, I...” Her voice trailed off and so did her eyes.

  “Howard,” Cassy said.

  Amanda looked at her.

  Cassy smiled slightly. “Rosanne.”

  “Ah, yes, Rosanne,” Amanda sighed, sliding down in the couch to rest her head back against it, looking to the ceiling. She crossed one arm over her chest and brought her elbow up to rest on it, holding her pendant in her hand. “It was the block party,” she murmured. “When it happened.” She turned her head to look at Cassy. “Do you remember that day? When I met you?”

  “Yes.” Cassy looked back down at her skirt, thinking. “I remember that day very well,” she said quietly. After a moment she turned to face Amanda, bringing her arm up along the back of the couch.

  Amanda looked at her, waiting.

  “Don’t walk away from it,” Cassy said.

  Amanda blinked.

  “It’s none of my business, I know,” Cassy said, her eyes moving away. But a second later they came sweeping back. “Amanda—” She reached over to lightly touch her arm, hesitating. “Time passes so quickly—and you’re young, now, and so you don’t know yet what—what—” Her voice was barely a whisper. She took a breath and tried again. “What I’m trying to say is that things are never right, that”—she shook her head slightly—”that, no matter who you love, it’s not going to be easy.” She paused, biting her lip. “Amanda—you might never be young enough to try again.” She closed her eyes, sighing. “I’m sorry,” she said, withdrawing her hand. “I have no right—”

  “It’s all right,” Amanda said quietly, watching Cassy fighting back tears. “I think you are very kind for talking to me.” Cassy wiped at one eye. “Rosanne is so right to love you so much.”

  Cassy let out a little laugh, blinking rapidly.

  Amanda smiled. “I always wondered if she talked about me.”

  “Oh, no,” Cassy said, opening her purse for a tissue. “She never did before. It’s only been recently.” She dabbed at her eyes and put the tissue back in her purse, snapping it closed. Her eyes came up to Amanda’s. “Last Friday she said she thought Howard was scared to see you.”

  A flicker of something passed over Amanda’s face. “And she said,” Cassy continued, sniffing once, smiling now, “’Ya know, Mrs. C, for a smart guy he sure is stupid—how could anyone be scared of Amanda?’”

  With this statement, Amanda’s head fell forward.

  “And you know what I said, Amanda?” Pause. “Amanda?”

  Amanda brought her head back up, swallowing.

  “I said,” Cassy said softly, “you only get scared of someone when you’re scared they don’t love you.” Amanda closed her eyes and turned her head away. When Harriet returned, she stood there, looking down at the two of them.

  At one end of the couch, Amanda was lying with her head back, her eyes closed. At the other, Cassy was leaning forward, crouched over her lap, pressing a tissue against her mouth. Harriet sighed, silently, and eased down between them, sliding an arm around Cassy. In a moment Cassy turned and started to cry, quietly, on her shoulder, and Harriet started to gently rock her.

  This was how Mr. Thatcher found them.

  Harriet looked up at him.

  Amanda looked up at him.

  Cassy, releasing Harriet—sniffing, wiping at her eyes with the tissue looked up at him. “It’s over,” he said, smiling. “Rosanne gets Jason back at the end of the month.”
r />   Their action was spontaneous. All three women laughed and cheered and starting talking at him at once. They didn’t have to go to a hearing? It was all done, all decided? Where was Rosanne? This was official, wasn’t it? Did Jason know?

  Rosanne came slowly walking out with Mrs. Goldblum on her arm. When the three women turned, the ladies stopped. “By gosh, we did it,” Mrs. Goldblum declared, eyes shining brightly.

  39

  AMANDA HAS A VISITOR

  VISITOR AT THE

  EMILY DICKINSON SCHOOL

  Featuring a trailing blue cotton dress, a long lavender scarf and a tinker’s delight of necklaces and bracelets, Amanda waltzed into the classroom promptly at seven. Her attire evidently met with her students’ approval, for they applauded.

  The class was in full attendance: Mrs. Mansolo, formerly of Naples and now of New York; Mrs. Lopez, formerly of Newark and now of New York; Mr. Krotzski, formerly of Warsaw and now of New York; and Mr. Williams, formerly of Riker’s Island and now of Manhattan.

  It was their fifth class together and they were already on page 70 of the workbook, which, according to Margaret Whelan, was extraordinary.(“How,” she asked Amanda, “are you moving them along so quickly?—”It’s their doing,” Amanda explained. “I tell them what page the other classes are on and they simply refuse to leave until they are ahead of them. My students are fiercely competitive,” she added, not without a touch of pride.)

  But it was Amanda who was learning so much! Amanda spent the first half hour of every class discussing some document or form that one of the students had been handed from the outside world. At the very first class Mr. Krotzski, with a deeply furrowed brow, had handed her a New York State driver’s manual. Since then, Amanda had been spending time with him outside of class deciphering it. Now, prior to this, the closest Amanda had ever got to learning how to drive had been learning the difference between broughams and carriages in Victorian novels. As a result, Amanda found the driver’s manual perhaps even more wondrous and enlightening than Mr. Krotzski did.

  What else was she learning about? Green cards, American citizenship, vaccinations, the Iron Curtain, small business loans, parole regulations, transatlantic postage and on and on and on. And then, this evening, was Mrs. Lopez’ turn and guess what her forms were? Social Security! Hooray! Amanda dazzled the class with her wealth of knowledge, and not only did Mrs. Lopez fill out her forms, but the entire class now knew how this magnificent system worked in ways most Americans did not! (More applause.) (They clapped a great deal in this class.)

  And then they got down to the nitty-gritty, and Amanda was explaining the difference between “there,” “their” and “they’re” when the door to the classroom opened.

  It was Howard. “Sorry,” he said, his face coloring. “Uh, Mrs. Whelan said I could sit in on your class. I’ll be teaching too.” His eyes were pleading with Amanda.

  After a moment she smiled. Broadly. “We would be very pleased to have you join us. Class,” she said, turning to them, “this is Howard Stewart. He is going to be a teacher too and would like to observe the brightest class in the school.”

  They clapped (for Howard or for themselves, it wasn’t quite clear).

  Howard took a seat in the back of the room. Mrs. Mansolo turned around in her chair. “You must telll the werrrld you ahre imporrrtant,” she said, waving him forward.

  Howard laughed, his face turning an even darker shade of red. He went up and sat to Mrs. Mansolo’s left.

  “Goot,” she said, bowing her head.

  Amanda was nervous for about ten minutes, but then her attention slipped away from Howard and back to the students and soon she was thoroughly wrapped up in the lesson, forgetting his presence entirely. Howard sat there, mesmerized. Amanda’s color was high; her body was in high gear as well. When she wasn’t making sweeping gestures with her arms, she was wildly dashing off examples across the blackboard—slashing and underscoring left and right. She praised her students constantly; when they were reading out loud, she would walk behind them, pull their shoulders back, lift their books off their desks, and make them hold them up in their hands, whispering, “Be proud of how much you know!” And then, between points in the workbook, she would whirl around—dress billowing up and around after her—and deliver a quick lecture:

  “To know how to read is to have the world open to you! If you can read, you can learn anything and everything you ever wanted to know. What does a lawyer do? Go to the library and find out! How do you fix a radio? Go to the library and find out! Is Clint Eastwood married?”

  “Go to the library and find out!” the class chorused, Howard included.

  “Yes!”Amanda cried, shooting her fist up in the air.

  (They clapped.)

  The class didn’t end until close to nine-thirty. They all walked out of the classroom together and at the front doors of the school the students said goodnight to Amanda and to Howard. “I just have to write a note to Margaret,” she said to him. He watched what she scribbled:

  Dear Margaret,

  Page 96!

  Sincerely,

  Amanda

  She slipped the note under Margaret’s office door and let the custodian know they were leaving.

  “Are you really teaching a class?” she asked him, walking down the hall.

  “Yes.” Pause. “Rosanne told me—”

  “Rosanne has been very busy, I must say,” Amanda said. Howard reached ahead to hold the door open for her. “Cassy Cochran appears to know more about you and me than you and I do.”

  Howard followed her outside. “I don’t mind. I like Cassy.”

  Amanda smiled slightly, glancing back at him. “I do too.” She waited for him to catch up and then they turned right onto the sidewalk. “Her husband is in the hospital.”

  “I heard.” They walked another step and then Howard stopped. “Why do you think she’s stayed with him?”

  Amanda shifted her books, bringing them up to hold against her chest. She sighed, raising her eyebrows. “Rosanne says no one who hasn’t been there can ever really understand.”

  Howard frowned slightly. “What, like her and Frank?”

  “Like her and Frank,” Amanda said. They walked on. “And there’s their son.”

  “I don’t know”—Howard shrugged—”It just seems strange, a woman like Cassy...”

  Amanda stopped dead, her mouth falling open.

  Howard whirled around. “What?”

  “Some people thought your marriage was a little strange, you know.”

  “Okay, okay,” Howard said, raising his hands as if to defend himself.

  “Oh, Howard,” Amanda sighed, “I’m sorry, that was a very unkind thing for me to say.”

  “No, really, it’s okay.” He looked around and then up at the street sign: 95th Street. “I, uh”—he gestured down the street—”I live here now.” He ran his hand over his jaw. “You wouldn’t want to come up, would you? To see—hey, did you know? I’m an agent now.”

  “I heard,” she said, smiling.

  “Well—would you? Like to come up?” And then, more quietly, “It’s not too soon, is it?”

  Amanda held out a hand to him. “It’s not too soon.”

  Howard grinned, took her hand, and started pulling her down the block.

  He apologized the entire way. It wasn’t much, wasn’t anything at all, Amanda would hate it, find it creepy and awful and...

  “If it’s yours, how could I not like it?” she said.

  While they walked up the stairs, Howard gave a running commentary (in whispers) about the various inhabitants of the building, pausing only to ask Amanda if she wished to stop and catch her breath. She didn’t and they soon reached the fifth-floor landing, where Howard groaned at Amanda’s inquiry about who was next door in 5B. “Later, I promise, later,” Howard said, unlocking his door.

  She liked it, Howard could tell, and as he grew more certain of it, he grew more excited about showing her things in it and she, i
n turn, seemed to get more excited about seeing them. The bookshelves? She did? He had built them himself. Build some for her? Sure... The curtains? That was Rosanne’s doing....

  “I love the desk too.”

  “Look, see, my files. My stationery. You do? Sure, you can have all the cards you want... Yeah, I do get distracted—it’s kind of hard not to watch. No, he’s scooping ice cream. He always eats ice cream during the news. Over there? Some lady. She irons a lot. I washed them—hung upside down to do the outside. No wonder Rosanne would never do the windows. What? She washes your windows?”

  He poured her a glass of white wine while Amanda tried out the chair at his desk.

  He had made his first sale. Yes! His commission would be twenty-five hundred dollars. Had Amanda received a contract yet? Yes? Good, Amanda would need Mr. Thatcher. Explain it to her? Sure, he’d love to.

  Howard came back in and handed her the glass of wine. Sipping his beer, he sat down on the edge of the desk, watching her. She was holding the glass in her lap, tracing the rim with her finger. Howard lowered his glass to rest it on his leg, took a breath, and said, “I love you, Amanda.”

  She didn’t move for a moment. And then she murmured, “I know,” rose from her chair, and moved over to the window. Looking out, she took a sip of wine and put the glass down on the sill. “There were men before you, Howard,” she said quietly.

  Silence.

  Howard took a swig of his beer and put the glass down on the desk.

  “I didn’t love any of them,” she finally said, bringing a hand up to rest at the base of her neck. “But then, I wouldn’t have seen them if I had.” She sighed slightly, lowering her hand. “I never wanted to fall in love again.”

  After a moment Howard said, “I can understand why.”

  “It’s funny,” Amanda said, nodding slightly, “but I think you probably do.” She picked up her glass, turned around, leaned back against the sill, held the glass to her mouth, and then sipped. Lowering it, “Whoever it was at the time would come every other Monday—”

  “Amanda—don’t,” Howard said gently. “Look, you don’t have to explain anything about—”