Riverside Park

by Laura Van Wormer

  Celia rolled out from under Jason and went into Mark’s toilet to get some paper towels. She dampened some and used them to clean herself up and then wordlessly brought some out for Jason. She went back for the can of Glade and sprayed the air. It smelled of fake roses and when she looked at Jason they both laughed.

  5

  Rosanne DiSantos and Mrs. Emma Goldblum

  “I HATE IT when you say things like that, Mrs. G,” Rosanne told her eighty-nine-year-old former employer, longtime friend and roommate.

  “I only said that it appeared the young foreign gentleman has a crush on our dear Amanda.”

  “And Amanda’ll never notice because she never does,” Rosanne said. “But now you’re gonna make me worry about what’s gonna happen when Mickey Muscles makes his move out there in wherever the heck she is.” Having only lived in Detroit and New York City, Rosanne DiSantos was not a fan of the country.

  “Connecticut,”Mrs. Goldblum supplied, sipping her cocoa. “Amanda is quite capable of taking care of herself.”

  That shows how much you know about how she used to be, Rosanne thought. Amanda was like another person since she met Howie, and even like a third person after the kids started coming. As much as Rosanne wanted to believe the old Amanda was gone forever she still worried a bit now and then.

  Rosanne had known Amanda and Howie for over fifteen years. When she earned her living as a housekeeper, they had been separate clients; Amanda was living by herself and Howie had been married to a first-class bitch that Rosanne hated.

  Mrs. Goldblum’s forehead furrowed slightly. “What is it, dear?”

  “Oh, nothin’,” Rosanne said quickly, forcing a smile. “I was just thinkin’ how guys are always gaga over Amanda’s boobs so she must be handling them, just like you said.”

  Mrs. Goldblum carefully replaced her cup into the saucer with a smile. “I might not have expressed it in quite that way, Rosanne dear, but I do understand what you mean.” After a moment her smile faded. “And perhaps it’s nothing.”

  Rosanne shot a look across the table. “Perhaps what is nothing?”

  Mrs. Goldblum withdrew the lace hankie she kept tucked in her sleeve and patted her nose with it. “It’s just that I’ve lived such a long time.”

  Oh, no, here we go again, Rosanne thought. Everyone got older, of course, but somehow she never thought it would happen to Mrs. G. She had always been a little frail, yes, like a little bird, but these “talks” she had started giving lately were giving Rosanne the creeps. Like she was trying to cram things into Rosanne’s head at the last minute.

  Rosanne couldn’t think about life without Mrs. G. (How dumb was that? A licensed practical nurse who can’t deal with people dying?) What had begun as a solution to the problem of an older widow with a rent-controlled apartment far too large for her and a single mother without a proper place to raise her young son had become over the years a very real family. Mrs. G had been one of her housekeeping clients, too, back in the days when Rosanne’s husband, Frank, had been alive. (The Stewarts had been on Monday, Amanda Miller on Tuesday, the Wyatts on Wednesday, Mrs. Goldblum on Thursday and the Cochrans on Friday.) This apartment had been Rosanne and Jason’s home for over a decade and Mrs. G was like a mother to her and a grandmother to Jason. Jason even called her Gran.

  And what changes had unfolded! Jason went from six to seventeen years old and Rosanne went from housekeeping to night school to becoming an LPN at Hudson Hospital. The fact that Rosanne hated nursing was besides the point. She had risen from a blue-collar living to become a professional. People looked at Rosanne differently now. And no one seemed surprised that one of Bronx Poly Sci’s academic stars was her son.

  Living in an apartment overlooking Riverside Park and the Hudson River had been quite something, too. Particularly since Mrs. G had been living in this three-bedroom apartment for like sixty-five years and her rent was only $1,450 a month, half of which Rosanne paid. What would happen after Mrs. G died was not hard to imagine; they’d already seen it innumerable times. Rosanne and Jason would be evicted and the apartment would be renovated and sold as a condo unit for well over a million dollars.

  What would she do then? Rosanne had no idea. Everyone expected her to marry Randy eventually but she preferred the relationship the way it was. Randy was a great guy and everything but while Rosanne worked steadily to improve herself and her lot in life, Randy wanted to keep everything the same. Change upset him. He wasn’t stupid, but he wasn’t motivated. He was a detective, but worked mostly behind a desk in an administrative capacity. Randy did his job, then left his shift on the dot to have a beer with the guys, maybe throw some darts and watch NASCAR. He had two kids by his ex-wife that he regularly saw and supported. The thing that really bothered Rosanne was how Randy never seemed to initiate any action on his own; if there wasn’t someone always there to tell him what to do next he would basically do nothing.

  Randy liked the way their relationship was. They went out on occasion, always saw each other on Saturday night (at which time they very pleasantly got on sexually), and Rosanne always cleaned his apartment so she could stand being there.

  So they just went on and Rosanne found it reassuring to have him in her life.

  “Okay, Mrs. G, you’ve lived a long time,” Rosanne prompted.

  Mrs. G moved her lips around a little before she spoke.

  This had started recently, too.

  “It’s not good for a husband and wife to live apart,”Mrs. G finally said.

  “Amanda’s not going to do anything.” At least I sure hope not, Rosanne added to herself. “She’s got the three screaming-mimis and Madame DeFarge to keep her busy.”

  “Hmm,”Mrs. G said somewhat gravely.

  Rosanne counted to five. “What do you mean, hmm?”

  She adjusted her glasses to look at Rosanne and, eventually, stare Rosanne down. “When you live apart, you begin to think outside of the family circle. It’s asking for trouble. A wife requires a certain amount of attention and Howard seems otherwise very occupied.”

  “Oh, Mrs. G!” Rosanne objected, wrapping her arms over the top of her head in frustration. She let her arms drop. “This is Howie and Amanda we’re talking about. They both made mistakes the first time around and they knew exactly what they wanted when they got married. Which was each other. And the kids. They wouldn’t hurt those kids for anything and I think it’s rotten to even be talking about this!”

  “I just worry,”Mrs. Goldblum said vaguely, preparing to rise from her chair.

  Rosanne had forgotten to steer Mrs. G into the kitchen chair with arms on it so now Rosanne needed to help her get up without Mrs. G realizing that she was helping her get up. Mrs. G had become extremely irritable whenever she tried to help her and had thrown an absolute fit last year when Rosanne installed bars in her bathroom and along the hallways (although, Rosanne noticed, she started relying on them at once).

  “At what time may we expect Jason?” Mrs. G asked, now on her feet and reaching for her walking stick. (That’s the way Mrs. G was—she didn’t use a cane like normal people; she used a walking stick, a skinny little black ebony stick with a silver handle that her granny or somebody used ten million years ago.)

  “A little after eleven,” Rosanne said, glancing up at the clock. “They won’t close the kitchen until ten.”

  “How we will miss him when he goes away to school,” Mrs. G said, moving toward her favorite seat in the living room to pick up her book. As was her habit she would take her book with her into the bedroom to read before going to sleep, but lately she had been falling asleep before getting to the book—or even turning off the light.

  The phone rang and Rosanne picked it up and held it under her chin as she cleared the cups and saucers from the table. She’d have to wash them by hand because they were Wedgwood bone china that had belonged to some other ancient relative of Mrs. G’s. “Happy Thanksgiving,” Rosanne greeted whoever was calling.

  Very carefully she put the dish
es in the sink and held the phone with both hands, taking a quick look back over her shoulder. “Yeah, sure. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be right down. I know it’s hard, but you gotta do it. And I’ll go with you.” She swallowed. “Don’t think about it, we’ll just do it and get it over with. I’ll be right down.”

  “Who was that?” Mrs. G asked, appearing in the doorway.

  “Samantha Wyatt,” Rosanne said, replacing the phone in the cradle.

  “Is she home from school?”

  “Yeah. And I’m just going to run over with her to see her parents. To say Happy Thanksgiving. Leave the dishes in the sink and I’ll wash them when I get back.” She kissed Mrs. G on the cheek and headed for the front hall closet.

  6

  Sam Wyatt

  “WHERE DOES SHE find these guys, in a catalog of the weird and the strange?” Sam Wyatt asked his wife.

  “I think she met him through work somehow,” Harriet said quietly, putting the finishing touches on a second platter of hors d’oeuvres. They were on a second round because their youngest was two hours late and they were starving. They also had to entertain the latest boyfriend their older daughter had brought home to share their Thanksgiving meal.

  Sam Wyatt’s eldest daughter, Althea, was thirty-one, black, Methodist and worked on Wall Street. The guy in the living room had gray hair, was white, and with a name like Donnelly was probably Catholic and had some kook job on Seventh Avenue. Sam always knew they would regret having sent Althea to that Muffy-Buffy school on the East Side for rich girls. Althea had grown up with so few black friends it was no wonder she dated white guys.

  Admittedly, Sam and Harriet revolved in a somewhat rarified circle of New York. He may have started life as the youngest of six dirt-poor kids of an army sergeant who died young, but Sam had earned a college degree and today, at sixty-one, was a senior vice president of Electronika International, the second largest manufacturer of electronic office equipment in America. Harriet, whose skin was much lighter than Sam’s, began in the training program at Gardiner & Grayson book publishers and today was Vice President of Publicity, Marketing & Advertising.

  “Be polite, Sam, that’s all I ask,” Harriet murmured, picking up the tray of hors d’oeuvres.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He finished pouring the old white Catholic guy a second glass of wine. Sam hadn’t had a drink in over twenty-one years, which was a good thing since it had been under only that one condition that Harriet had allowed him back into her and Althea’s life. That was why there was an eleven year age difference between their daughters. Althea was from Round 1 of their marriage while Samantha was their AA baby, the child from Round 2 who benefitted most from her parents being in Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon.

  Where the heck was Samantha? he wondered, looking at his watch. Traffic, he supposed. Harriet said after the scolding they gave Samantha about her last cell phone bill she would probably claim it had been “uneconomical” to call them from the road.

  “Cliff was just remarking on the boat,” Harriet said when Sam came in, nodding in the direction of the framed picture of their sailboat.

  Sam handed the old white guy his glass of wine.

  “Thanks, Mr. Wyatt. Althea says you moor it in Manhattan for part of the year.”

  “At the Seventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin,” he confirmed. He sat down and took a sip of Crystal Lite. (It wasn’t half-bad compared to the other low-calorie crap Harriet was always trying to get him to drink.) “This time of year we keep it at our place in South Carolina.” One of the reasons they had been anxious to get the girls together was to tell them he had finally worked out early retirement with Electronika; he and Harriet could afford to stop working in the spring. They were planning to downsize from this apartment (thank God they had made the stretch to buy it) to a two bedroom and spend half the year in South Carolina and half up here in Manhattan.

  Althea would be fine with not having them around half the year. After breezing through Columbia at their expense, Althea had gone off to Berkeley with her boyfriend at the time to get an MBA. With the degree (and without the boyfriend) Althea came back to New York and took a job on Wall Street, something she said she would do until she paid off her student loans from graduate school. She became an investment analyst, one of those brainy people who researched companies to see if the firm should underwrite a bond issue for them. If the analyst’s recommendations were correct, the firm often made a ton of money; if the analyst was wrong, though, the firm might still make some money up front but its reputation could take a hit which ended in long-term loss. The analyst responsible tended to vanish.

  When Althea had told Sam she wished to stake her career on specializing in alternative energy, Sam’s heart had filled with dread. Leave it to whacked-out Berkeley to prepare his daughter to be the only person on Wall Street who would never make any money. But then, of course, the oil crunch came and a drawing of Althea’s face appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal as the high scorer in a suddenly enticing field. Her recommendation to underwrite a bond issue for a small company holding a patent that promised to revolutionize the production of hybrid engines was a grand slam, while earlier bond issues—in wind turbos, micro-turbines, corn refineries and municipal thermal-dynamic energy plants—were sent flying around the bases. Her latest venture was underwriting an outfit reopening abandoned sugar factories.

  Althea was going to make partner in January. Last year Sam and Harriet had been agog to learn Althea’s salary was ninety thousand dollars—supplemented by a $650,000 bonus. To his daughter’s credit Althea gave over seventy-five thousand dollars a year away, paid something like three hundred thousand dollars in taxes (three hundred thousand dollars in taxes!) and moved into a two million dollar loft in SoHo.

  This kind of money seemed insane to Sam and Harriet. And yet their own apartment, overlooking Riverside Park, had been appraised at over a million five. (They had bought it for two hundred and fifty thousand!)

  But that was the nature of the great have and have-not divide of the new America, wasn’t it? The whole country seemed morally out of whack. You had everything or you had very little.

  However lucrative Althea’s career might be, she was paying for it in other ways. Her work was wildly intense and geographically complicated. When she was in New York she worked a minimum of twelve hours a day and otherwise was on the road for the better part of each month. It was not fun travel, either, or even sequential. It was “go to Sacramento to pitch a bond issue to the California state pension fund, then get back in time for the meeting with the partners and then get down to Knoxville to scout that company before anyone else gets there and don’t forget next Monday is the public hearing on the Nova Scotia wind project, and Thursday is the Westminster Bank summit in London, and the following week you must get in to see that nutcase in Venezuela” kind of travel.

  The Wyatts were also particularly proud of Althea’s personal agenda in her work, to generate jobs, products and energy options in places where there were few. Why not use the earth’s earliest and most bountiful foods like corn and sugar to stretch our oil reserves? Why not harness desert winds to make electricity? Or turn the endless summer sunshine of Alaska into the electricity needed to run air conditioners in the continental United States?

  Now as for Samantha, the Wyatts’ nineteen-year-old, she was a very different matter. Frankly speaking she was a little spoiled and being that much farther away from them for six months of the year made both Harriet and Sam a little nervous.

  “How much longer do we have to wait for Sammy?” Althea wanted to know, reaching for a piece of celery. She crunched down on it, showing the beautiful teeth from childhood orthodontics. Althea was a good-looking woman, tall, slim, with great cheekbones Sam recognized as his own. But it was Samantha who was the beauty of the family. Samantha looked like her mother.

  “We’ll give her another ten minutes,” Harriet said.

  Althea sighed, grabbed a piece of cheese and sank back into the
cushions.

  “So what exactly do you do on Seventh Avenue?” Sam asked the guy. (He wished Harriet would go into the kitchen to check on something so he could eat some cheese, too.)

  “I’m a textile designer.”

  “Samantha will be so interested,” Harriet said. “She’s in a theater group at school and loves making costumes.”

  What the hell kind of job was it for a man to be a textile designer? Sam wondered. “I guess you have to be, uh,” Sam said, “inclined toward that kind of work?”

  Althea rolled her eyes.

  “I’m afraid my husband gets slightly deranged when he’s not fed,” Harriet explained.

  The white-haired guy was laughing. “It’s okay. My dad had the same reaction.”

  “Your father’s still alive?” Sam blurted.

  Althea picked up a carrot from the tray and gently threw it at her father. It bounced off Sam’s barrel chest to the carpet.

  “It must be my hair,” the guy said to Althea. He looked at Sam. “It’s a family trait, Mr. Wyatt. A lot of us go silver before thirty-five.” He smiled, looking hopeful. “I’m only thirty-four, sir.”

  “Don’t bother explaining anything to him,” Althea told her boyfriend, “because I won’t be speaking to him again as long as I live.” She glared at her father. “You got it now, Dad? Cliff is not gay, he is gainfully employed and he’s thirty-four, okay?”

  Sam mumbled an apology and then looked at his watch. “Where is that girl?”

  “I vote we go ahead and eat,” Althea said.

  “Five more minutes,” Harriet said, “and if she isn’t here…”