“Buddy’s afraid to be rich. He has to have somebody to lay it on. But the peacock has to stand very still. Take his money, if you have to. I earned it. But get away somewhere. To that Paris, if it pleases you.”
“You can’t earn it for me,” I said. “Not going to war taught us that.”
I tucked my elbows tight against my ribs. Architecturally, the terrarium was speaking to me. But a real terrarium is for plants, I thought. All moisture, no air. Or not much. It’s not for the animal kingdom. Even a peacock wouldn’t want in. Not for long.
“He wanted to give me the farm. He planned on it. I thought, yes, maybe I could stand on the porch there. And look at my life. But he wouldn’t be there standing with me. Equal. He won’t do it with you either. Even poor old Blum agrees with that.”
… But I’m young. And I’m the son … True, Bud hadn’t mentioned taking her up there. When he talks of her, he never gets her quite right—I saw that. But he couldn’t be the ogre she made of him either—I knew that. “What’s Blum got to do with it?”
“When I went down there, that once, to the opening, I made friends with her again. She was his girl for a long time once; did you know?”
“Now that I think of it.” I hadn’t, much.
The Kwan Yin I’d mistaken for Maeve was in position again; I could see its coif, bent. Anyone who sat on the bench would be looking at its face. On the other side of the bench—another head, too high for an occupant of the bench to pat easily. The Chinese lion glared at me resignedly; porcelain never believes its own expression. But always knows its value. This one was a beauty. Like mismated companions, those two. She must have dragged them both back.
“She still is,” Maeve said. “Now and then. Buddy’s a generous man. He doesn’t like to see the money go out of the family, but he’s generous. Every one of the girls he’s had since, has had a house built for her. When he moved on.”
“Maeve.” It stood to reason. That a man wouldn’t have just one. But within a family, it’s always a revelation. “Did you always know?”
“No, but should I mind, really? I’m the one he never left. Blum says he hasn’t anybody now. And my house, he’s grown to love it. Look at it.”
Did she like it, didn’t she. From her expression I couldn’t tell.
“What about you?—did you ever?”
“Once. But he lived in the suburbs. We couldn’t keep it up.”
It was chilling, of course. To find out they hadn’t lived their lives for me. Still, I had been kept. For tonight.
“Can I stand like you? Like this?” I sidled—and suddenly I was backed up against the globe, spread-eagled against it with my hand halfway from my sides, like hers. I made myself laugh at her. “Gives you a feeling you’re off the floor.” The sliding door was between us now. With a chink of light on the open side. My side.
“If we’d moved to the suburbs, it might have worked out. I might have got out. But he wasn’t a city man. Living in a Bronxville hotel. Temporarily. The Gramatan, the one that closed a while back. When I saw the notice of that, I—but of course we didn’t move.”
… In the bathroom, way back. Could I have sensed it, somewhere between the elbows? …
“You were going to leave Buddy?”
“I needed time to. He was negotiating for a seed farm; he wanted us to live on it. You see its name now in all the garden stores.” She said it dreamily. “Maybe I would have. But this way—we broke up. I felt guilty for a long time.”
I didn’t ask her which way. Maybe she saw my face. I wouldn’t bank on it.
“He wasn’t a city man, that was only why. You mustn’t think that Buddy and I haven’t anything in com …—that we haven’t had—it may be hard to see now … but once.”
I knew what they had. You see it any age, anywhere; none of us our age knows how to get out of it. In all actuarial probability I’ll inherit the tendency; the margin of error otherwise is very small. She and Buddy have a hell of a lot in common, even without our long line of houses, the pile of stocks and bonds that must go with it, and me like a sick-and-sorry Cupid on top. Or the farm, that will go blindly, serenely from one owner to the next, with all its brambles and cows. She and Buddy—my parents the Bronsteins—they dug each other’s lies. They tell each other the same world-dwarfing stories. Call it love; people do.
“Buddy show you those peepholes?” Maeve said. “When we came here, he showed me the one in the hall. ‘Peek.’ he said. I did, and what-do-you-know, I saw my life. And the house I should build for it.”
She bites her lip just like Buddy does. “You think badly of us?”
“I don’t, Ma.” I’d dropped that, at their suggestion when I was six.
She looked me full in the face. Put her hands out to me, forsaking her wall. “What we gave you, I’m sorry it was only love.”
It was then I jumped. Into the terrarium. Lightly, as I knew I must. Dropping on all fours. That way I figured to equalize any shock. Of my weight. The step up had been about three inches. I had cleared it. My weight after a summer of no swimming is one-seventy. Nothing trembled in this floating filigree in which I had landed. What had I expected? Floor was floor under my knees and palms. Balsa. Good show, Claes. Yet my elbows hugged my sides, dreaming their stresses and strains.
A border of earth, flower-box wide, circled the wall. No plants showed, but it had been heavily watered. There must be a run-off for seepage below. Where had the drains been in the hanging gardens of Babylon?—holes in the stone itself maybe, savoring the precious stuff like a camel’s gut. There was provision for violet light here, and up from the floor near the door a separate switch box which I opened. A Murray Load Center, all trim and well-housed. That was wise. I closed it.
Clinging to the doorframe, my mother leaned in at me, whispering like a gargoyle that dared not scream. As if even air counted here.
When I moved, she moaned.
I stood up slowly from the ankles, to a kneebend, keeping my center of gravity holy, like an acrobat. Only my body was smart. I still hadn’t guessed.
Slowly I inched toward the grouping at the bench.
“Don’t. Not any nearer. Bunt.”
“Where is it, then.” I turned, slow-motion. A gas-cock, my stupid head was looking for. Or a small egg of metal, set to ignite. After all I’d been brought up on explosions, rocket-flares, house timbers rising like feathers and settling again in the television air. With the people running ahead, clouds behind them, their faces stretched like hers.
“Everywhere.” A puzzled whisper, more lucid than mine.
“Is it in the plants?”
A nod. Hands wrung white. When I moved again, one covered her mouth. “Hold still. Wait. Please wait.” She covered her eyes.
I felt behind me, in one of the pots. The plant, set in spongy florist’s stuff, had almost no roots. The rest of the pot, iron and about eighteen inches in diameter, was filled with stones, mixed with disks, machined, and regular. I palmed one, inching it out. An ordinary old-fashioned kitchen-scale iron weight, marked with a “5.” I didn’t need to examine the other pots. All close in a ring, and all as large. My hand had spoken to my head. Finally.
As a child, after all, it was only falling from windows that I’d been warned of. But in the apartment-house dream, sometimes, slow as blood-hum, the wall sinks away, and down.
I turned my head. An oddly intimate grouping—a bench, a lion, and a statue. All with one thing in common. And now me. And I had it too.
No odder than any fire-escape family. On a hot night. A short, intent man, say, and a thin, cool woman. The wicker stool the son always sat on. And the son, of course, the last to be added. They always settled themselves before he was allowed there. To be alone there was forbidden, though he had done it. Mornings, when only the maid. Now it was night. And we three are gazing out, into the central park of our longings, that ends for some on Fifth Avenue, on the far side. But we are together still. We are each of us pulling our weight.
Like
now.
“Maeve … look at me.”
She’d never stopped. She shook recognition into her eyes. We were maybe four yards apart. Less. I held out my arms … I had a right to know, I thought. But did I? In the years to come, I’ll fathom it …
“Come, Maeve. Join me? Us.”
She scraped her thighs with her nails. Agony is simple. A skull trampled into pavement. A woman lugging weights into her house. A man watching them.
… You’ve guessed it, haven’t you Batface …
She stretched her arms toward mine. Keening is a throw-back sound. “I daren’t. Add my weight.”
So we had trapped each other, she and I.
“It was only for me,” she said. “Only for me.”
“Is it to maximum?”
“Past. It must be. Days ago. Those plants…. Bunt? How did you know to come?”
How had I?
“I had a loss.”
I started to walk back.
“No! Don’t move suddenly. Hold still.”
If I did, what would I hear?
“Let me call the fire department maybe. Or get a rope.”
“No sweat. I’ll bet it’s okay.” How violent her images were, of how to get through normal life. Machinery instead of muscle, that’s the real violence; sanity is not involved. “You added the weight day by day, is that it?” Hour by hour?
“Whenever I could. I look through the peephole. And then.”
Her voice was so dry. It drew my respect.
“Right. I’d watch that earth-border after this, though. Against too much watering.” And seepage from rain.
“Just get over here. Please.”
But when I lifted a toe, she went white. “Can you jump?”
I thought of all the old architecture I knew. But I was adrift in their world now. Of reinforced concrete.
“No sweat.” I smiled at her, humoring. “Not for a swimmer.” A sprint, and a little flying jump up and over onto the other floor-level, nothing for my long legs.
And all the time, I was sure that the world would hold. “Okay, hon. Stand back from the door.”
I took a look at the apartment from there. The huge Rothko glowed red, descending into orange, then to a nude band I couldn’t entirely see. I raised myself on toe, leaned forward.
And Doughty shot past her through the door. Slid to a braking stop on the glossy floor. Snapped at Lion, dismissed him with a sniff of recognition, and sauntered to earth. Nosed it, trotting this new globe full circle. On the far side, he stopped, looking at us. Dogs relate to posture. In us. Suddenly he sprang in the air, yipping at his own behind, galumphing round and round, up and down, with mock-snaps over his shoulder at us, fawning for the ball I must have somewhere, prancing high again, in the antic glee of the good animal who knows the difference between real wrong and the mischief we will love him for. At the far end he stopped short, growling. Faced us over his shoulder. Not a growl—I’d never heard a dog make that sound. A cajoling whine. A cringing whimper. At the enemy he can’t see.
How much does a Great Dane weigh? His puzzled, dowager face asked me it, while his back legs scrabbled a little, sensitive one second before I was, to the canting of the floor.
Maybe earthquakes begin like that. Nothing savage at first, or open. No cracks you can see. An undertow. Your sense of perpendicular is even tickled. Like anything important that happens, the feel is partly sexual. Like fear.
Maeve screamed. My name. Or I’d have stood there. Back of me, under, I felt the floor yawning away from my heel. I dug in the toes of my sneakers, sprinted up the incline that tilted in front of me—in real falling, the dream isn’t of down, but of up—grabbed for one of the aluminum struts that had buckled forward, swung there while the strut slowly bent—from the Mark of Zorro, Douglas Fairbanks flashed me, I swear it—and kneeing inward with all my strength I landed, sprawled. Maeve helped me up. I held her, slumped in my arms. Behind us we heard the crack.
When Jannie and my father came up, the first to come running, I still held her, they say, lifted, her head and feet dangling, like some girl I had dragged in from the sea.
I remember Jannie. He was ahead of Buddy, and his need shines always in his face. I approve of that. He’d already run such a distance with that life-story of his behind him, a bundle that whether he walks or runs hits him regularly in the back.
Anyway, I handed her to him. Right in his arms. While Buddy stood by. Buddy’s newsboy face would haunt me, but I couldn’t help that.
“People get lost,” I said.
I HEAR BUDDY WANTED to go in after Doughty but was restrained. Poor Doughty’s nails didn’t have much purchase on the balsa; maybe that frightened him. He could have made it; the terrarium had sagged to a point and then stopped. But he cowered at the border, his four feet clamped in earth. A bright fireman got him, though not until the police were called too. After they’d sent in the tear gas, the ladderman got Doughty—with a grappling hook, it looked like. Whatever they use on us. I saw the dog’s arched neck rear above the battle-smoke like a Delacroix horse; two of the buckling metal staves crossed under it like bayonets. Gravel he was kicking up soared in high arcs and fell, slow as tracer bullets—from old movies. I could hear the dum-dum bullets, softnosed, exploding on impact—that people thought we had outlawed. And this was only one house.
When I slouched off, the police were already calling the demolition experts. I could have told them the terrarium wasn’t going to fall any further, of itself. As proved the case. It was to hang there for two months while a wreckage crew with the will and means was sought for—the area-way wasn’t very large. And while the Fifth Avenue Association protested the crowds that came to view. They came like they still did, I heard, for that house the Weathermen blew up on West Eleventh Street. Maybe they took the day off and visited both. Our globe could have hung there like at Pisa, or at Venice, or Agra, where the ruined angles still hold for a long, long time. They could have let it hang there in its milky colors, like a warning from Fifth Avenue, to those fancy highrisers that watch us from the Palisades. We could have propped it up, and it could have stayed there for people to brood on. In the mornin’ an’ the evenin’, as the song says. A warning and a miracle. An opal bad-luck piece.
But I saw how the clear and present danger ennobled every official face. We build for ruin here, we don’t save for it. And the flat would be sold. And I knew I didn’t want to be an architect.
When we begin to slouch off—my crowd, our age, call us what you want—it starts a long way back, in the way the bones handle, the clothes and the gait, the voice. A kind of pussy-footing, with insolence. For all our torn fates. Throwing it away, onka-bonka. Throwing it all away. Yet khaki is still so boss for us. Such a camouflage. I was wearing army surplus myself. When I left the wall I was leaning on, they never saw me go.
I went into the armory-room, to get my head clear. Quiet place, leather-padded for history to be comfortable here, old-blotter walls, air dim as a museum afternoon, in the wrong wing. The collection was a laugh, but I liked it. Halberds and vizors, musketry on a wall.
I never wanted to be a summer soldier. Or a winter one. Above Seventy-sixth Street, I heard a passenger plane whining toward nirvana. People are the bombs now. Hold your breath, the air’s bleeding as they pass through. All soldiers are the same now, in their sphincters and in their khaki brains. And all lonely slouchers, walking sentry for the world. There’s no leaving it.
I went to the nearest bathroom and vomited up the war.
THE GOURMET YOU CAN get at night in the downtown financial district is extraordinary. You can sit in the one glow-worm hash-house that keeps open for policemen and other derelicts, have a western omelet, and watch dawn creep up the spine and structure of the world. The financial one. And the moral one. At four AM, their minarets tend to combine at the top. Buddy wanted to sit at a table, but the guy at the grill said, “Counter service only, buddy.”
“Come here often?” Bunty said. “Seems to know
you.” He glommed in the mirror at his own cruel face, on which the red beard was beginning to blush.
“We have our own commissary.”
“I’ll serve us,” Bunty said. “My pal’s beat.” He settled his father at a table, and brought back the food. Buddy had his head in his hands. That was normal here. They sat for a while, until Buddy could take a sip of coffee. When he had downed half a cup, his head came up.
“Westerns are the best in these joints.” This reversal of roles gave Bunt no surface joy. But at the bottom of himself, an imp of Kilkenny screwed out a smile. “Come on, eat something.”
His father ate. In the window, the view bloomed like a series of Cathedrals walking toward them along the river’s edge. They were on a stretch of sludge looking northeast up the harbor, at the outcroppings which hid the inland city. Two of the nearest towers were like marlinspikes, half-hitched to the sky.
“Very good.” Buddy made no move to go.
“Funny, how no matter what they build down here, it ends up looking maritime.”
“All made-land, this part.” His father pushed at a crust on his plate.
Two workmen rolled in, fresh-faced and far-eyed, as if they had come up out of the water itself.
“Place must serve the crews on the Trade Center. They work early, sometimes all night. Port Authority dispensation. Or the Mayor.”
This was the most his father had said since the police had made them leave the apartment. Gas seepage, they said, and maybe watersoaked cables. You folks better go to a hotel for the night, hah? Money’s no problem here, the lieutenant’s left eye said to the patrolman he was leaving on guard. As he took Buddy’s donation. All smooth. Except that Buddy wouldn’t go to a hotel.
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