City Light

by Harry Mazer

  Once I was sure someone was inside, tiptoeing around. “Hey!” I jumped up and turned on the lights, but it was nothing. I couldn’t go back to sleep after that, so I pulled the phone in from the other room and dialed Rosemary. If her father answered, I’d hang up.

  Rosemary answered. “George?” she said.

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Who else would call me in the middle of the night?”

  We talked for a long time. Rosemary was telling me about a letter she’d gotten from her favorite brother when I fell asleep. I woke up to hear her saying, “… think I should go for a visit?”

  “Where?”

  “Aren’t you listening?”

  “Wherever it is, don’t go. Scratch that. I’m being selfish.” I must have fallen asleep again. When I woke up, I had the phone on the pillow. “Rosemary?”

  “Uhhh.…” She’d been asleep, too.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Sing to me,” she said.

  I started singing some old corny song. “On top of old Smokeeee.…”

  “Nice,” she murmured and sang with me.

  Julie and I never sang. I didn’t even know I could sing.

  I woke in the morning, the phone against my ear. “Rosemary?” Listening, I could hear her breathing. And I imagined her curled up on the couch, sleeping, with the phone against her lips.

  Chapter 27

  A few weeks later, on the way home from work I saw Julie driving by in her father’s blue Pinto. It was a warmish wintery day. I’d just bought a couple of apples and a wedge of cheddar cheese. “Julie!” She had stopped for a light. I tapped on the window and got in. “How about a ride?”

  She didn’t say anything. I presented her with an apple that I polished on my sleeve. “You look good, Julie.” She was wearing corduroys and a sweater.

  I took a bite out of the apple. I offered her the cheese, and in my mind I thought, I’m doing this perfectly. I’m so together, I’m so at ease. I’m probably dazzling her. “How’s your life these days? You and the significant other?”

  “Significant other?”

  “What they used to call boyfriend.”

  “I’ve got other things on my mind.”

  “School? Have you made a decision?”

  “Fairleigh Dickinson.”

  “Wise. Not far from home. That’s practical. Why spend money on room and board when you can go to school and live at home? Room and board. No pun intended.” But then I explained it, because she wasn’t responding to anything I said.

  “Room and b-o-r-e-d,” I said and got the same exciting response. “No slur intended against your family. How are your parents?” Still no response. “This is a sincere and heartfelt question, Julie. How are they? I always liked your mom and dad.”

  “George, shut up,” she said, and she gave me a furious look.

  “What?”

  “What? What? You know what!”

  “Maybe I ought to get out right here, Julie.”

  She stopped the car.

  “Give me back my apple.”

  “Very funny, George. Did you get a laugh when you read the story in the Clifton Courier? Was it a thrill seeing it on TV? Is your father going to buy you a little sports car now?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fabulous offer Muggleston Developers made for the property on One-thirteen Cliffside.”

  “My father’s building?”

  “Your father’s former building. My family’s former home. We’ve got six months to vacate.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me no, George. It’s sold. A million dollars.”

  “My father?”

  “Your father, who was never going to sell our house. He loved this town so much he was never going to let the developers in, no matter how much money he was offered. Right, George? He was going to keep the town the way it was. Right? Remember the lecture he gave us once about little towns being the heart of America and how everything good was in the little town and everything bad was in the big city? That impressed me. I thought your father was so smart.”

  “My father’s not doing that,” I said. I was stunned. I didn’t know why Julie was saying it. There had to be a mistake. “A million dollars?” My father hadn’t said a word about it. “He would have told me, Julie. You’ve got it wrong.”

  “Why don’t you get out of my car.” She pulled over to the curb.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said.

  I wanted to talk to my father, but I was scared. Not scared of him, but scared of what I was going to find out. I didn’t want to just say to him, Dad, is this true? Because the answer might be short and deadly.

  He couldn’t have sold it. I didn’t believe it. I remembered the walks he used to take with Joanne and me when we were little. We always started on Taylor Avenue and ended up near Bridge Street in the old part of town. As we walked Joanne and I counted stores and blocks. “Twenty blocks to a mile,” my father said. A block with ten stores was a tenblock. Every tenblock we’d get a prize, a stick of gum or a nickel. After twenty blocks we stopped for ice cream.

  In the old part of town, we walked past plain little houses with tarred roofs and wire fences painted white, with small gardens on the side and in the back, and grape arbors. My father would show us things. A dog in a yard, a cage with rabbits. Sometimes he’d show us an odd addition somebody had put on the side of their house. He liked the different things people did to their houses. “Every house is different,” he said, “just like every person is different.” My father always met people he knew, and they’d notice my sister and me, and we’d have to stand around and be polite and wait for the grown-ups to get done talking. Even though he didn’t grow up here my father loved Clifton Heights. To sell the old apartment house, to invite in the developers, would mean bringing in thousands of people and cars and traffic jams. It meant destroying the old neighborhood. My father wouldn’t do that. What Julie said couldn’t be true.

  But as it turned out, the only place that it wasn’t true was in my head.

  Sunday morning after breakfast, he asked me to wash the Cadillac. I was polishing the chrome when he came out to get something out of the glove compartment. “Dad,” I said, “did you sell the apartment house?”

  He looked at me through the glass. The curve of the windshield distorted his face, made it wider, flattened out his cheeks, made his whole face look like a rubber mask. “Yes,” he said.

  “You sold the apartment house?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “You sold it?” I had to keep saying it. “I thought you were never going to sell that house. I thought you loved that place. You even told me once you’d like to retire there, so you could look at the river every day!”

  “George, George, George. Slow down.” He got out and shut the door. “The building was beginning to cost me money. It needed a new roof.”

  “Nothing wrong with that roof. Just because it leaks a little. What’s going to happen to those people in the house?”

  “The boiler’s shot, the windows are going to have to be replaced. The plumbing! I could go on. There was no future in that building. It’s a money-eater.”

  “You sold it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell me. You never said a word. Why’d you keep it secret? I had to hear about it from Julie!”

  “So when do I have to report to you? When do you report to me? You do what you want to do. You get a job, you stop working for me, you stay overnight with people.… That’s okay. It’s your life. But it works both ways, son.”

  Did my father sell the house because I wouldn’t work for him? Crazy thought, but it crossed my mind. “What about the people in the house?” I said again. “What are they going to do? Where are they going to go? What about that snoopy old lady on the first floor? And Julie’s parents?”

  “They’re going to have to move.” He was solid and hard, like a block that I c
ouldn’t penetrate. “I’ll help people as much as I can, but I have to think about my own family.”

  “Not me! You weren’t thinking about me when you did this. You did it for money, Dad. They offered you a lot of money, and you couldn’t turn it down.”

  “So, my money isn’t yours?”

  “I don’t want it. I don’t want your money. I don’t need it. I can earn my own.”

  “Polishing furniture? My independent son. What are you making, minimum wage? And what happens when you want to start out in a little business of your own? Where does the money come from? Aren’t you going to turn to Pop then?”

  “Is it possible you did this so you could have money for me? Is that what you’re saying? That’s terrible! It means what happens to those people is my fault.”

  “Don’t be so self-centered. And don’t be so sensitive, my son. How about your mother? Can I worry about her? And your sister. Can I worry about her? How about me? Can I worry about myself? Life isn’t like television. People get old, they get tired, they can’t work. They get sick. How long do you think your mother and me are going to work this way? Are you going to pay for my funeral? Or are you going to build me a box?”

  I threw down the chamois, because in another second I was going to throw it at him. I didn’t want to listen to his crap. He was just making excuses, making me feel sorry for him, and guilty. Guilty! Guilty for not thinking about my mother and my sister, not thinking about the family. Guilty because I didn’t want to be a hairdresser. Guilty because I liked wood. Guilty because I wanted to do things my own way.

  I didn’t call Julie. What could I tell her that she didn’t already know? My father had sold the building, sold out, and I didn’t want to talk about it. Not to her.

  “I don’t want to live with my father anymore,” I said to Rosemary on the phone.

  “Why not?”

  I told her about the apartment house. “He did it for money. He talks about the family and his old age, but who needs a million dollars? That’s just greed. I never thought my father was like that. I’ve lost my respect for him.”

  “You can always leave,” she said.

  For her, it was simple. She’d done it already. And in a way, her parents had helped her along by breaking up. She could leave one parent and go to the other. She could leave her mother and go to her father. But was I ready to leave home? “Where am I going to go?” I said.

  “You could stay here for a few days.”

  I had to think about a lot more than a few days. I wasn’t going to leave school, and I’d have to work. How much could I afford to pay for a place? What did it cost to rent a room? I asked Rosemary what they paid for their apartment and what I heard scared me. That was more money than I could make at Lydia’s in two months.

  “What about where you work?” Rosemary said. “You stayed there a couple nights, didn’t you? Maybe she’ll let you live there and you’ll watch the place for her.”

  It was such a simple, fantastic idea. I had to call my boss at once. I didn’t see how Lydia could say no.

  “Are you sure this is something you want to do, George?” Lydia said. “You’re mad at your parents now, but that’s going to change. Everybody gets mad at their parents.”

  “This isn’t going to change.”

  “I don’t know.… When are you going to be eighteen?”

  “In two months.”

  She leaned back. “Well, I was working and supporting myself when I was sixteen. Your parents may not like me for doing this.…”

  “You’re not doing it, I am. It’s my decision. You said you were planning to hire someone to watch the place. Why not me?”

  “Okay. I’d just as soon it was you. But don’t feel you have to stay when things clear up at home.”

  “My passionate son,” my mother said. She was in my room while I packed. Joanne sat on the bed, using Magic Markers to decorate her sneakers. My father looked in once, then walked away.

  “Where’re you going?” I said, but he didn’t answer me.

  I wanted him to say something, start the argument all over again. His silence was hard to take. It put it all on me. Here, he’d been so good to me all his life. What had he ever done that was bad? And what was I doing to him now? Disappointing him. Leaving him. Deserting him.

  I packed two of everything: two pairs of pants, two shirts, two pairs of pajamas, two pairs of socks. One to wear and one to wash.

  “Tell me again,” my mother said. “Why are you moving out? What are we doing that’s so wrong? We owned a building. We bought it twenty years ago and now we sold it. Buildings are bought and sold every day, a hundred times a day. That’s business. Why do you want us to be different?”

  “What about the people who live there? Don’t you think about them at all?”

  “You want the truth? Are you going to hate me if I tell you? Are you going to stop talking to me?”

  “Mom. I’m still talking to you.”

  “I know you. I know once you get an idea, there’s no shaking it loose. But the truth is, there’s the real world and there’s the idea of the world. And you’re not in the real world yet.”

  “I don’t think you should go,” Joanne said. “I think it’s stupid. Tell him, Mom. Tell him how much he’s going to miss us.”

  “I’m not going to Mars, Joanne.”

  “Yeah, you’re going to be here every day after school for your munchies and to use my computer.”

  “Think again, George,” my mother said. “We’re going to miss you.”

  I laced my knapsack shut. “I just feel like I have to do it, Mom. It’s not because I don’t love you.”

  Downstairs, my father was drinking a cup of coffee in the kitchen. He shook hands with me, then his hand went to his pocket.

  “No money, Dad.”

  “Oh. Oh, of course, I almost forgot. That’s what this whole thing is about. My son, the bleeding heart.”

  “I didn’t hear that, Dad.”

  “Well, then, I didn’t say it.”

  Joanne had the last word. “I know why you’re doing this, George. It’s a big show for Mom and Dad’s benefit. You’re going to be back. You know you are.”

  Chapter 28

  It was lonely living in the back of the store. There was nobody to ask me if I’d eaten, and when, and had I done my homework and showered and made an appointment with the dentist, and what time had I come in the night before. Now I had to think about all those things, and I wasn’t as scrupulous and persistent as my mother was on my behalf. Which meant that I had to face the fact that I had good intentions, good instincts, good training, but all of it didn’t always add up the way it should have.

  A lot of mornings, I didn’t have time to eat because I’d gone to sleep late, or because I’d been talking to Rosemary half the night. Not that, even with enough time, I could have made myself an elaborate breakfast or an elaborate anything. I had a two-burner electric hot plate and no refrigerator. I shopped every day, and sometimes I forgot, and didn’t feel like going out again, so there’d be nothing to do but eat crackers or stale breakfast cereal.

  Lydia had had outside lights and burglar alarms installed after the break-in, but still, there were long spooky nights. A lot of nights I’d lock myself in and settle down with my books and snacks and the radio on and the telephone where I could reach it. I was aware that I was safe, but I still listened. I heard the whine of trucks, or a car engine suddenly revving up, or mice scratching under the floors. Or was it a hungry, mutant giant rat gnawing through the wall to get to me? And with that thought, it would be like the first night again with the store broken into and the plastic yawning open, and me in the back with my feelers out and my eyes big as a cat’s.

  I had a lot of time to think. Sometimes I thought about Rosemary and Julie, how they were alike and how they were different. Both of them were doers. They didn’t wait for things to happen. But Rosemary flashed, she burned. Julie was quiet, deeper, slower.

  Me? I waited. Maybe th
at was my whole strategy in life. Waiting. Waiting for life to show me its direction. Waiting for something to happen—and something always did. And it was always a surprise, always something I didn’t expect.

  It was as if I were moving through life with my eyes squinted, half closed, and then something bumped me, nudged me. I’d see it as I ran into it—whatever it was, this thing, this moment, this something that was out there for me and right for me. That was how I’d met Julie. A ping in the back of the head with a miniature marshmallow. That was how I’d stumbled into working for Lydia. And it was how I’d met Rosemary.

  A year ago, six months ago, I didn’t know her. I’d had my life all figured out. All the pieces in place. George going in a totally different direction. It was George and Julie forever. We were going to college together. Eventually I’d go to work for my father, someday own the business. At some point, Julie would open a medical office and we’d get married and settle down here or in Englewood, or if we could afford it, North Park. And now everything had changed.

  Julie and I were going our own ways. I was working, getting involved with wood and old furniture. Was that going to be my life? And Rosemary—she was in my life somehow, but I wasn’t completely sure how. I didn’t see us fitting neatly together. She was an artist. I was—at this point—a furniture stripper. Would I do it all my life? And where was my life going to be? Clifton Heights? New York City? Los Angeles? Someplace I hadn’t even thought of yet?

  The bus to school was roundabout, so I usually rode my bike. It meant an hour in the morning and an hour at night. It rained a lot that spring and even though I wore a slicker, I still got soaked. Sometimes I was out early enough to stop at the house, but more usually it was after school. As Joanne pointed out, I managed to stop home two or three times a week for one thing or another, mostly to shower or do laundry.

  Since I had moved out, Joanne and I were nicer to each other. She’d make something to eat, or I would, usually fruit-and-ice-cream softies in the blender. Then we’d sit around and talk. Every time I got up to leave, the lazy part of me said, Stay. Stay home. What difference does it make?