Lapham Rising

by Roger Rosenblatt

  Play It Again, the town toy store, is down the street from Reigning Cats & Dogs. Beyond it lie Watch It, the jewelry shop; Love All, the tennis shop; Picture This, the framing shop; Flower Power; and Hair Today. All the stores have stage names except Bookhampton, whose name I’ve always admired because it seems to suggest a Hampton composed entirely of books. Nuts ’n’ Bolts, the hardware store, Song ’n’ Dance, the music store. Not long ago, I proposed to a cop on the beat that the police and fire departments be yoked together under the name Shoots ’n’ Ladders, but he seemed uninterested.

  Writer’s Crock, briefly a chichi restaurant, now has whitewash slathered on its windows and a boarded-up door. Last spring, in an effort to create what she called a Gustatory Athenaeum for the Written Word, a garrulous groupie aptly named Lipman inaugurated it as an establishment whose only patrons were to be writers, along with a smattering of media types who would make note of the writers present. As a special touch, she drew the menu from recipes detailed in well-known books, among them Faulkner’s braised cuttlefish, Dreiser’s kumquat stew, and a dish of boiled shoes described in The Gulag Archipelago. The restaurant closed after six weeks, not because the writers had grown tired of their own company or the media people of reporting on them, but because a dozen customers were hospitalized with food poisoning.

  The toy store allows dogs, so I let Hector tag along. But the answer comes up negative here as well.

  “No. No horsehair. We do have a very nice hobbyhorse, but it’s hairless.” The woman clerk, who frightens me on sight, bears a terrible resemblance to a photographer who once approached me at a reading. She had Medusa’s exploding hair and an expression blending anger with desire. She wanted to take my picture for future book jackets and kept flying at me as though I were a liquidation sale. If I’d had four other guys with me at the time, I would have slugged her.

  When I inform the clerk that the hobbyhorse will not do, she takes the news as a personal rebuke and sulks into a copy of Glamour.

  But on the counter I do see something of interest: a doll about a foot tall, with big brown eyes, overdressed in a yellow satin gown, a yellow beaded necklace, and a conical hat from the middle of which protrudes a pink plastic ruby.

  “It comes with a wand,” says the clerk, revived by my attention to the doll. “Go ahead. Touch the wand to the ruby.” Music plays, and the doll starts to speak. “Isn’t she adorable?” the woman says. “She’s called Fairy Tale Dora. Dora—you know, Dora the Explorer?” I tell her I do not. “Oh! Dora is very popular. Children love her videos. She speaks English and Spanish.”

  “Does she do construction work?” And before she can give me a straight answer, I see Dora’s hair growing out of her cone crown. The hair gleams in a braid like Kathy Polite’s. In fact, Dora looks a good deal like Kathy but seems kinder and better educated. There must be ten inches of hair sprouting from her head. “It feels quite real,” I comment to the clerk, whose eyes begin to narrow. I rub the hair between my index finger and my thumb to test its strength. I twist it into a torsion spring. I rub it some more. I sing, “Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll,” holding my bandaged ear like a band singer of the 1920s. The smile has vanished from the clerk’s countenance.

  “You seem to like the doll,” she says, her lips tightening. “This would be something for your granddaughter?”

  “No.”

  “A niece? The child of a friend?”

  “No, I’d like it for myself,” I tell her. “I’ll take four.” That should do it. I keep stroking the hair. The woman backs away. “How much?” I ask.

  She glances around the store as if searching for backup. “You know,” she says finally, “I just remembered: we’re all out of Fairy Tale Doras.” I hold up the doll in both hands as evidence of her error. “And we are forbidden to sell the floor sample.” More looking around the room. “I, uh, I could order four dolls for you.”

  “But I need them today,” I insist, hoping that my enthusiasm may persuade her to bend store policy. It seems to have the opposite effect. Hector tugs on his leash and whispers, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Well,” says the clerk, her eyes now flicking from side to side like pinballs. She is appearing more Medusa-like by the second; the locks of her hair are aflame. “Perhaps I could check the inventory downstairs.”

  “Never mind,” I tell her. With petulant resignation, I reposition Fairy Tale Dora on the shelf. It is 3:51. I’m getting nowhere.

  “You really are crazy,” says Hector when we’re out on the street again. “You’ll get us tossed in jail.” He may be right. When we’ve gone twenty yards or so, I turn back toward the toy store, at whose front door I see Medusa speaking with a policewoman pointing in my direction. I take the high road and move on, as if I could not guess what they’re discussing.

  “Let’s look in One More Time,” says Hector. He is eager to get off the street. One More Time is an elegant secondhand shop that sells stuff once owned by the old-rich families of the area. Over the years it has become an accidental and transitional repository of Southampton folklore. When one of the great cottages is demolished to make room for a newer and larger monstrosity such as Lapham’s, the contents are often sold to One More Time, which in turn sells them to newcomers. Thus does the High Life stay aloft in remnants, as photographs of the Whiffenpoofs of 1928 or of the St. Paul’s lacrosse team (all wearing beanies), or cast-iron doorstops in the shape of Scotties or rabbits, or stacks of pinkish cake plates, or tiny tarnished silver spoons are passed down to those who wish to acquire the old world here, much as they do by way of the calculated fantasies of Ralph Lauren.

  Hector, I am certain, regards whatever time we might spend in this shop as another delaying tactic. But I know that unusual things may be found here, so I ask the horsehair question as we enter.

  “You will not believe this,” says the proprietor, a sharp and witty woman who always appears to be looking me over as a potential future piece of merchandise. “We were given a hatbox full of horsehair only last week.”

  “A hatbox full of horsehair!” I repeat. We seem equally excited, though I soon discover it is not for the same reason.

  “A hatbox full of horsehair,” she says again. “Mrs. Livingston, of Gin Lane? Do you know her?” It comes to her that she is talking to me. “Oh. I guess not. Anyway, Mrs. Livingston discovered the hatbox in her attic. It belonged to her husband’s grandmother, also Mrs. Livingston.” I attempt to wave away the mesmerizing biography of the Livingstons. “Well, sir. She discovered a hatbox full of horsehair.”

  “Please do not say it again,” says Hector.

  “Yes! It seems that the older Mrs. Livingston wanted to preserve the hair of her favorite jumper, a gelding named Mr. Huey, after Mr. Huey went lame and had to be shot.”

  “A hatbox full of horsehair!” I repeat deliberately. “Well, my dear. You have a sale.” For a moment I allow myself to think my tide may be turning, and I offer a silent thanks to the gelded Mr. Huey and the sentimental Mrs. Livingston.

  “But that is the part you won’t believe,” says the woman, and in so doing indicates that my brief taper of happiness is about to be snuffed out. “I sold the hatbox this very morning!”

  “No!” I cry.

  “Yes!” she cries back. She assumes I am reacting to the coincidence rather than to a catastrophe. “Do you know a couple named Lapham?” she asks. My cheekbones freeze over, my left eyelid twitches, and all my cells go dry. “Well, it seems that Mrs. Lapham makes her own throw pillows, and when I told her about the horsehair, she grabbed it up. It makes a perfect stuffing.”

  “Doesn’t it,” says Hector.

  “It’s very sweet, really. She’s is making a pillow as a surprise for Mr. Lapham and is planning to present him with it on the occasion of the completion of their new house. I hear it’s magnificent. It’s quite near your island, actually.”

  “Is that so?” Hector snickers.

  “And the whole thing was pure luck: she�
��d come in for a pair of Victorian asparagus tongs, but then she saw the horsehair. Of course, it was ideal. Such a nice story,” she goes on. “The Laphams had a dog who died last year. Why, it was just like your little Hector! A Westie!” Up shoot those ears. “So Mrs. Lapham, knowing how Mr. Lapham adored their dog, is embroidering a picture of it on the cover of the pillow. You never saw anyone happier than she was when she took hold of that hatbox full of horsehair. Providence, she said. She called it Providence.”

  “Amen, sister,” says Hector. I drag him out of the store.

  “We’re going home,” I tell him.

  He sees a gregarious Jack Russell down the street and begins barking furiously at him.

  “May I ask why you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Bark at the sight of another dog.”

  “Because other dogs bark at me.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, eyeing me as if I had asked him the stupidest question in history.

  “You don’t see me flying off the handle when I spot another human being.”

  “Actually, I do.” I drop the subject. “You’re giving up?” he asks hopefully.

  “Not a chance.” Armed with the information provided by the pet store proprietor, I am eager to get back to Noman. Hector senses this. I glance down. “No! Please!” Without warning, he has assumed a take-a-dump squat at the base of a venerable sweet gum.

  “How could I resist?” he says, completing his deposit. “Did you get a whiff of this tree?”

  The Jack Russell, who has now parked himself in front of the toy store, lets fly again. Hector balances upright against the taut leash, then takes off after him, pulling free from my grip. I pursue him to the Jack Russell, reaching him just as Medusa emerges from the shop and starts yelling at me, her finger pointed like a pistol at my face.

  “You stay away from here! And what are you doing to this poor creature?” Hector rushes up to her and wags his tail desperately.

  “I’m going to kill Fairy Tale Dora and my little dog too,” I tell her, snatching back the leash. Back at the sweet gum, a small crowd has gathered to study Hector’s gift to the town. Some are absorbed in the sight like paleontologists unearthing a fossil. The others are glowering at me. They concern me more than Medusa. In Southampton, the crime of not cleaning up after one’s dog makes pedophilia look like a misdemeanor. I really need to get home.

  Traffic is supposed to stop for pedestrians at the crosswalk, so I pay no attention to the approaching cars as Hector starts to lead us to the far side of Main Street, where we will catch the bus back to Quogue. He trots along with a merry gait. Nothing seems to bother him for long; I don’t know whether it’s because dogs have short memories or if it’s simply the way he is.

  Out of the corner of my eye I glimpse an apple-green Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible heading toward us. Something tells me that it is not going to stop at the crosswalk, and I am soon proved right. Hurriedly I yank Hector’s leash and pull him out of the way of the careless automobile. As I do, its right front tire clips my right big toe.

  So shocked am I by this illegal discourtesy that I do not yelp, though a sharp pain shoots up my leg. Even Hector is taken aback. “Did you see that?” he cries. “I could have been killed!”

  Despite my horror of making a spectacle of myself, I fall to the ground and lie there on my side in the middle of the street, glaring after the hit-and-run. I can see only the back of a man’s very large head on the driver’s side of the convertible. He is wearing one of those wide-brimmed straw plantation owners’ hats, and he never even looks over his shoulder to see what he has done. I note the rear license tag, a vanity plate. It reads APHMS.

  The policewoman who earlier conferred with Medusa hustles over to where I am lying to ask grimly if I am all right. She looks as frolicsome as a catcher on an all-girls’ professional softball team, and young enough to have received her badge and uniform on the same day as her First Communion. A crowd of six or seven coalesces, then disperses. A nun wearing aviator sunglasses reaches down to press a dollar into my hand. “Poor man,” she says. I pull myself up, refusing the officer’s help. Naturally, she did not see what happened and knows only that I fell in the street. I assume she thinks I am looped.

  “Was that who I think it was?” asks Hector, staring after Lapham’s Rolls as though it were a chunk of roast beef on wheels.

  The policewoman insists that I be checked at Southampton Hospital, a few blocks away. I try to protest that I’m perfectly OK, but my limp betrays me. She half ushers, half pushes me and Hector into the backseat of her patrol car.

  “I wasn’t askin’,” she says. “And by the way, I understand you were behavin’ like a creep in the toy store. You’re lucky I’m only takin’ you to the hospital.”

  I grasp my toe and feel it throb. “Hector! You’re the bomb!” someone calls from the street.

  “That’s me, all right,” I tell the policewoman. “Lucky.”

  Thirteen

  Is it you?” She studies my face in her rearview mirror, through the black wire mesh that separates her seat from the one reserved for us child molesters. I flinch. The siren splits open my head, exposes my brain, then commences drilling. Hector sits beside me in the New York Public Library lion position. The toe begins to bulge out of my Teva like a quick-ripening plum.

  “Yes.” I am more certain of my answer than of her meaning.

  “I had you in high school,” she says. I do not bother to offer a cute reply. “We were made to read one of your stories. It was about a couple who had sex during a wake. I didn’t get it. You still writin’?”

  “No, I’m boning up for the Police Academy.”

  “Yeah. Funny.” She turns off Main Street toward the hospital.

  “This is ridiculous. Just let me off anywhere. Thanks very much.”

  “It wasn’t me lyin’ in the middle of Main Street holdin’ my toe. This is for your own good.” She turns to me. “And this is for mine.” She reaches back through a small window in the wire mesh and hands me a ticket for Hector’s dump. I hand it to Hector, who bites it.

  “Is the siren really necessary?”

  “You don’t want the siren? No siren.” She turns the thing off.

  “I like the siren,” Hector says to me. Now he is up on his hind legs, his front paws braced against the left rear window. I check the hour. Five o’clock approaches. “I love the siren,” he corrects himself.

  “Too bad you can’t make your wishes known to the nice police officer.”

  “I’m praying for you,” he says. “You can never tell how serious a toe injury might be. The poor crushed little fellow might shoot a blood clot straight up a vein into your heart, in which case you’ll die in a matter of seconds. You’ll be gone. Then what?” He pretends to weep. “What will happen to poor little Hector then? Where will he go? A foster home? An orphanage? The North Shore Animal League? And how long will little Hector be kept alive there, with no nice family to come along and see him whooping up the wood chips and fall in love with him on the spot? How long before little Hector is deemed expendable, and they use that euphemism about ‘sleep’? Oh…” Now he is keening. “Oh, is there no one on this great wide earth who will rescue little Hector?”

  I am grateful when we pull into the emergency entrance. Hector adopts his Save-My-Master tilt. An orderly or whatever they are called these days—a physician’s mobile assistant—trots out to the driveway to meet us. I crawl out of the police car, refuse his help, and drag my wounded foot toward the door.

  “Don’t thank me,” says the policewoman, who is standing by her car, arms folded in front of her. “I was just doin’ my duty.”

  “In the time you’ve wasted on me, you could have caught two serial killers and an arsonist.”

  “I’d have preferred their company.” Hector finds her hilarious. She gets back into the driver’s seat, puts the patrol car in gear, and begins to pull away. “And stay out of toy st
ores,” she calls.

  “You’re a doll.” I wave good-bye.

  “No dogs in the E.R.,” says the orderly.

  “Where I go, he goes.” I repress a sigh. “This is a waste of time,” I inform him. “Entirely unnecessary.”

  The orderly takes down some basic information, fills out a form, then insists that I climb onto a gurney to take the weight off my toe. A doctor will look me over shortly, he assures me. It had better be shortly. He reaches into his pocket and produces a Band-Aid with a yellow smiley face on it. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s all I have.” My toe smiles up at me.

  Later and later. If I fail to find some usable material…“Say, you don’t happen to keep any horsehair around the hospital, do you?” He regards me clinically, as if wondering if he has made too superficial a diagnosis. His eyes loiter on my bandaged ear.

  “O Lord,” Hector begins to pray, “I come to You on bended knee in spirit because, as You know, I am unable to bend my knees, and still I come to beg You for the life of my master. Make him whole again, O Lord. Heal him in mind and in toe, so that he will abandon his bootless acrimony and pursue a life of virtue and quietude, from now on and evermore, attending faithfully to his little Westie, Thy servant, Hector. Amen.”

  “Beautiful,” I tell him. “Inspiring.” He howls a gratingly sharp version of “How Great Thou Art.”

  Ten minutes pass, then twelve. Flat on my back, I can see only the ceiling, which I am persuaded is lowering toward me. On a table beside the gurney sits a stack of publications by area authors: A Celebrity Guide to the Hamptons (With Addresses and Phone Numbers); Hedges I Have Known; Baking Halibut for Fifty; a coffee-table book of photographs of sunglasses and lip balm; and a copy of Envy, a glossy magazine with pictures of movie stars who live in the Hamptons attending the East Hampton premiere of Love Hamptons Style, in which they make cameo appearances.