Spirit of the Place (9781101617021)

by Shem, Samuel

  “I’m glad,” she said. His worn leather jacket was open over a white shirt and a wild purple tie that fluttered in the strong breeze, giving him a jaunty, carefree look.

  Silence, that paralytic silence known only to shy people.

  Mrs. Tarr took over, introducing everyone to everyone. And then she started circling, Miranda following. Next, awkwardly, Orville. Then, happily, Amy.

  “Didn’t they have fashion shows here?” Orville asked.

  “Righto!” said Mrs. Tarr. “The door’s locked, but you can see in.”

  She ushered them beneath the sagging mouth of the portico to a window beside the front door. Leading down into the foyer were the remains of a grand curve of staircase. Orville dimly recalled seeing Selma come down that staircase in the cobalt-blue satin ball gown that she now was flying around in. The mahogany banister was mostly intact, but many of the black walnut steps were missing, probably stolen and sold for drugs. The foyer was littered with beer cans and Styrofoam thises-and-thats and a mangy sleeping bag and the charred remains of a campfire. Druggies and squatters and rats were the only guests.

  “The fashion shows were benefits,” said Mrs. Tarr, “put on by the Junior League or the Hospital Auxiliary. Your mother organized several. I miss her very much.”

  “Grandma Selma?” Amy asked, surprised.

  “That’s right, dear. Before you were born. I can still see how lovely she looked, coming down that staircase and then announcing the other girls one by one.”

  Amy considered this. “I wish I had seen her . . . I mean, lovely?”

  “Oh she was divine!” said Mrs. Tarr, smiling. “It’s chilly. Let’s walk.” She led the others in a tight ellipse as the wind picked up.

  “Why Worth?” Orville asked Miranda.

  “’Why Worth what?’” she asked back, a twinkle in her eye.

  “Uncle O.?” Amy shouted, over the wind. “Why are we picketing?”

  “Because, Amy,” Miranda said, smiling at her, “your father wants to knock it down and put up a supermarket.”

  Amy’s mouth made a little o. “My father?”

  “Plotkin and Schooner are trying to knock it down.”

  Amy considered this. She stared at the decrepit hotel. “He wants to knock down this . . . this beautiful historical hotel where my Grandma Selma was a fashion model? What a reeker!” The others laughed. Miranda looked at Orville and winked. “Milt’d knock down his own mother for money! How can we stop him?”

  “This is how,” Miranda said.

  “Let’s go!”

  They started circling again. But the wind had picked up, colder and stronger, a premature Canadian blast funneled by the Catskills and Berkshires into the Hudson Valley and then, at Columbia, breaking over the humpback of the town and turning into a whirlwind circling from North Swamp to South, blowing down the bright dying leaves of the Columbian fall and tormenting the unprepared people. The sandwich boards acted like sails, the big gusts catching and lifting them. Mrs. Tarr and Miranda clutched at the wooden edges as if holding on to the masts of a ship. Orville helped push them upwind and then, on the downwind leg, helped hold them steady.

  “I’m freezing!” Amy cried. “I’m really, really cold!”

  “Me, too!” Miranda shouted over the gusts. “Let’s stop.”

  “Come to the DAR,” said Mrs. Tarr. “We’ll have hot chocolate.”

  The solid brick DAR was right next door, and soon they were cozily settled in the private library, cupping their mugs for warmth. Miranda and Orville smiled at each other once or twice, shyly.

  Orville was surprised to find, still there after all these years, two immense whale jawbones set on end, spanning the lending desk like a bony arch. He recalled standing under them as a boy, the desk looming over him and those scary, pointy-teethed whales soaring up to the ceiling as he asked the woman if he could sign out one more book than normal—just one more, please?—and when his request was denied hearing Selma, looming even larger behind him, arguing with her, screaming in the dead silent library so that he wanted to crawl into one of the cracks in the floor. And suddenly his mind filled with the night when the Worth seemed to talk to him and—worse still—he pictured Celestina Polo in Nepal with the Swiss banker and the half-an-elephant, rafting and meditating and making love, and he began to feel really bad. Waves of longing and grief washed over him. The only things he knew that might just take away the pain were alcohol and what Celestina herself had taught him, to breathe. The first was unavailable, and the second brought her back even more intensely, making it worse. Desperate, afraid of casting a pall over all this warm and cozy and happy with them, he asked, with feigned interest, “So. Why Worth?”

  “Why what?” Mrs. Tarr asked, cupping her ear. “Whatwhatwhat?” She was a patient of his, and Orville knew just how hard of hearing she was.

  “Why Worth?” he repeated more loudly, looking to Miranda for help.

  “Why Worth what?” Miranda teased, again.

  “Who was he and what did he do to deserve a hotel?”

  Shyly, Miranda smiled. They were back into their conversation at the schoolhouse. Feeling even more attracted to him now, Miranda found it easy to move with him that way, even a relief. “William Jenkins Worth is born in 1794 on Coffin Street, a son of two original Nantucket Quakers. In 1812, at eighteen, he’s working as a clerk at Gadicke’s Feed and Grain, up on Eighth, measuring out barley and oats and doing a lot of heavy lifting. He’s bored stiff. General Winfield Scott, with seven hundred soldiers in snappy uniforms and the latest guns all aglitter and lots of big healthy horses and fifes and drums, camps overnight right on Courthouse Square on his way north to fight the War of 1812.”

  Amy and Orville asked, more or less together, “Which war was that?”

  “Americans fighting the British and the Indians. Worth joins up, runs away from home. With General Apocalypse Smyth and General Scott, he’s a hero at the Battle of Niagara, leads a massacre of the Indians at Chippewa, and becomes the Fourth Commandant of West Point. Restless, he runs off to massacre more Indians, this time in Florida in the Seminole War—Lake Worth, Florida, is named after him. All through the 1840s he’s leading massacres, this time of Mexicans in the Mexican War.”

  “Yech!” Amy said. “Killing Native Americans? What a jerk.”

  “But jerks tend to rule, Amy dear,” said Mrs. Tarr.

  “No joke! In school, the boys go down the halls in groups so you can’t get by, shouting ‘Boys rule! Boys rule!’ But we go, ‘Boys drool! Boys drool!’”

  “Jolly good for you!” said Mrs. Tarr. “I wish we girls had such guts in my day, yes.”

  “When I was little,” Amy went on, “we chanted back at them, ‘Girls go to college, to get more knowledge; boys go to Jupiter, to get more stupider.’”

  “Which is,” Miranda went on, laughing, “probably true of General Worth. He’s stupid, but he looks great. He’s said to be the most handsome man in the American army. Sitting on a horse he looks gorgeous, and he’s a terrific dancer. The most popular dance of the day is the ‘General Worth Quickstep.’ America falls in love with him. And here in his hometown, they name this, the best hotel in Kinderhook County, after him. Famous people stay here—politicians, itinerant opera singers, titans of industry. Because of his talent for massacre and his gorgeousness on horseback and his dancing, he’s a natural to run for president. But he has a . . .” she smiled mischievously, “a fatal flaw. He was one of the most stupidly arrogant, self-centered men in history, and it brought him down. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot? He tries to hog the limelight of the Mexican War by personally receiving the surrender, upstaging the same General Winfield Scott who’d lifted him up out of being a nothing here in Columbia. When chastised by Scott, he writes bitter, self-serving letters to newspapers, ripping his benefactor to shreds. The powers-that-be retaliate, stationing him out in the middle
of nowhere to fortify the new border with Mexico. To honor him they name the first fort in Texas after him.”

  “Fort Worth?” Amy asked. “I’ve been there with my parents. It’s so uncool, like all yucky with golf courses. Milt plays there.”

  “It’s a thrilling story,” Orville said. “Columbia Boy Makes Good.”

  “Not so good,” Miranda said. “He dies of cholera in San Antonio before he knows of the honor.”

  “A great American,” Orville said cynically.

  “In fact,” Miranda said, “he almost is.”

  “Do they exist?”

  “Try George Washington. Incredible man. After the Revolution he could have become a dictator, another Napoleon, but he gave the country back to the people. Steered us clear of becoming a banana republic.”

  “So now we’ve got a regular republic,” he teased, “but with a banana in charge?”

  Happily the group sipped hot chocolate and chatted bananas and Indians, whale jaws and Revolutions, while the howling wind rattled the huge old windows of the Federal-style house until Miranda had to leave to pick up Cray at soccer. And Amy and Orville would end their Sunday afternoon as usual at the Hudson Diner up at the Seventh Street Park with the lard-fried everythings of Orville’s, and now Amy’s, youth.

  “And he’s buried up there on Cemetery Hill?” Orville asked, as the group broke.

  “Oh no!” Mrs. Tarr said, shocked. “That would be much too lowly for him. He’s buried under an obelisk in Manhattan, Fifth and 25th, facing the Flatiron Building. All of his battles are carved on the obelisk. Chapultepec, Vera Cruz, Puebla, Lundy’s Lane, Chippewa, Chorobusco—quite musical actually, are they not?”

  All agreed that they were incredibly musical.

  “And the historical irony, of course,” Miranda said, “is that no one notices he’s there. It’s a traffic island now, railed in, and there’s not much free sidewalk. Even if you did notice, it’s such a busy spot, noisy and frantic with traffic, few people stop. If you looked casually you’d think it was a relic stolen from some tomb in Egypt. Nobody reads what’s on it. Poor Worth.”

  As Mrs. Tarr flipped off the old light switches one by one, each with a sharp clack, Orville asked Miranda, “About the hotel, is there a chance you could win?”

  “Almost certainly not. We’ve petitioned to have it put on the National Register of Historic Places, which delays things a little. To restore it would cost half a million. The people of Columbia want to tear it down. Most of our support comes from the people out in the county, but they don’t have a vote. The feds have agreed to pay two-thirds of the demolition costs. We’re waiting for the National Register to decide.”

  “It could be the centerpiece of the resurrection of downtown,” said Mrs. Tarr. “The antiquers are with us, but they are few.”

  “So what are your chances?” Orville asked.

  “Uncle O.!” Amy cried out. “You mean what are our chances, right? You’re with us, right?”

  “Totally. What are our chances.”

  “Just about zero,” Miranda said. “Even if it’s declared a historic site, if no one comes up with the money to restore it, the mayor can still knock it down. Plotkin and Schooner get to develop a brand-new history-making Price Slasher supermarket.”

  “Those reekers! We’ve got to stop them.”

  “So the bottom line is,” Miranda went on, “that it’s just about hopeless, wouldn’t you say, Mrs. Tarr?”

  “Quite hopeless actually, yes.”

  “Then why,” Orville asked, “are we doing this?”

  Miranda felt a sense of relief. She was suddenly on familiar ground. It was as if he were asking her “Why try to walk?” or “Why try to mother?” or “Why try to avoid falling in love or avoid falling out?”

  Given the dim prospects, Orville was surprised when, as she answered him, her voice was light and musical, as in that flirtatious moment of possibility in the dreary schoolhouse the week before.

  “Why, Dr. Rose,” she said, touching his hand, looking him straight in the eye, “do we only do things for the results?”

  · 10 ·

  “Babs said this mornin’ that since you’re doin’ such a fine job with the practice, and since it’s gettin’ cold, maybe her and me’ll take a little vacation down in Boca. Now, I don’t know, I mean what the hell is an old feller like me gonna do down in Boca Raton? Funny name, ain’t it, Boca Raton?”

  “Mouth of the Rat,” Orville said, comforted by the waft of scallions.

  “That so? Even with Babs so nuts about animals, I doubt she has much affection for a rat, heh heh. Her idea is we do Thanksgiving down there with the other snowbirds. But then we come back for Christmas. We’d be gone just a couple, three weeks?”

  “Uh-huh,” Orville said, leaning back in Bill’s chair behind the old desk. Bill was sitting in the patient’s chair and looked disoriented. “You want to change seats?”

  “What’s that? Nah. Feels kinda good bein’ on this side. Say, Doc, I’ve had this problem in my groin for about ten, fifteen years, and—heh heh.” He blew out two plumes of smoke, coughed spasmodically, turned a little bluish, turned back to pinkish, and, pointing the Camel at Orville, went on. “I promised you you wouldn’t have to carry the whole load, Orvy, so if you say no, then I can say no, and, hell, I’m happy.”

  “The practice has been kind of slow, Bill. Three weeks is okay by me.”

  “Shit. Kinda wish’d you hadn’t of said that. I told Babs I can last two, maybe three weeks in Boca before my brain busts. We’d be back the first week in December?”

  “Go for it, Bill.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Day after tomorrow. ’Course I been sayin’ that for fifty-odd years, so we’ll see.”

  But he in fact had left on that tomorrow, and that was two weeks ago now, and since then the practice had turned sour.

  Orville soon realized that Bill hadn’t told him about deer hunting season—drunken hunters trying to bring into focus the twists and turns of the woodsy hog-backed roads out in the county, crashing into trees, cremating cars and humans. Unhappy hunters back home blasting away at family and friends. To Orville, it often seemed like Columbians were bagging more Columbians than deer. One day it would be a hunter bagging a propane tank of a house, exploding a family of six into the air. Another day a hunter bagging a schoolbus, showering the kids with glass—only one eye was lost but still. Housewives hanging up wash on the line getting a barrelful of buckshot. Several Columbians blasting off parts of their own bodies—a toe, a foot, a finger, a hand, an arm, a leg, a head—yes, even a head—leaving gaping wounds behind.

  Exhausted by all this, Orville worked like crazy to find creative solutions, ways to take these remnants of the severings and eviscerations and amputations and gapings and, out of them, as the New York antiquers were always putting it, make art—that is, make not necessarily humans but bodies. Exhaustion and the intense focus on his work lengthened the intervals at which the loss of Celestina Polo tormented him. But for the enlivening carnage and the Sunday afternoons with Miranda and Amy, he was living in a blackout, carrying his exhaustion on his back like a curse, simmering with resentment. He became outspoken in his critique of hunters and hunting, and this stirred up a lot of anger among the Columbians. More and more he found himself arguing with his patients. Not good, he would say to himself, trying to cool off after another sharp exchange in the office or the hospital, definitely not good. I mean, doctors are supposed to be neutral, right?

  Even during those precious few hours on Sunday, his one afternoon a week off, his bitterness moved in. He was mostly okay visiting historical sites with Amy and Miranda and even the tough Mrs. Tarr, but often he would encounter his patients. They would want to talk about their problem or someone else’s or about his attitude toward deer hunting
. Try as he might to listen patiently and respond courteously, he felt that he was failing, seeing himself at best as stiff and standoffish and at worst as oafish, even harsh. Bitter, yes. He worried what Miranda was making of all this.

  As if the overwhelming workload weren’t enough, Orville had gotten mugged. Early one morning a few weeks ago on a house call down below Fourth, he had been walking back to the Chrysler when a steel arm went around his neck from behind and his lights went out. He awoke in the hospital with Packy Scomparza the cop staring anxiously at him. His bag had been emptied of syringes and drugs. No suspects. Diagnosis: concussion. Orville thought he might have a chance to rest a little, but they yanked him out of bed that very morning and wheelchaired him down to emergency to tend to a 300-pound young man whose giant red-and-white checkerboard hunting jacket made him look like a billboard for Purina Dog Chow in a space warp. The kid was a hunter who had tracked a deer into a swamp and sunk in. He had to be sucked out by the Schwermann Well Driller. His core body temperature was 87. Despite efforts to fricassee him back up to liveable, he died.

  The good thing about the mugging was the arrival on his doorstep of a single red rose and a postcard of the Worth in its former glory with the message: “Feel better! Affectionately, Miranda.”

  Writing it, Miranda had hesitated how to sign it. Over the several Sundays that she had visited historical sites with Orville and Amy, she found herself liking him more and more. She kept looking for evidence in Orville of the kindness and compassion that Selma said he’d shown by staying with her. She thought that she had found it—not only in the way he acted toward his niece and her and Mrs. Tarr but in the way he was with the patients he often met. She watched him respond to their questions and complaints with frank care and concern, with patience and compassion, even as they took up precious time on his one afternoon off a week. He seemed a kind, generous, loving man who, like her, was always fighting a certain shyness. As she had seen this part of him, her affection had grown. She thought to sign the card “Love,” but at the moment her pen point touched the cardboard, her fear came back. It was the fear of his saying “temporarily,” of his being only temporarily there for her and for her son. The fear of again being left. And so the “L” became, with a little nudging and fudging, an “A.”