New Yorkers

by Hortense Calisher

  As he neared the ice-skating rink where they were to meet now, he couldn’t see her on it. Leaning over the rail, he checked his watch, nervously early; after all they were to be married at four. Awkward with this lack of ceremony to which they’d set themselves—to scold their progenitors for what lacks he couldn’t quite say—he was already formally dressed for the ranks of Fenno cousinship one somehow oughtn’t to annoy; he would not skate. Girls’ social rebellions were thin skinned; even if they’d lived openly with a man before the wedding—as none of his cousins had done—in the end they often proved romantical. Romance—in the end they were its custodians. He hoped she was, so that for the conventional period—of at least a day—he might be part of it.

  Here his outsidership was a help to him. He was sure he now understood the Mannix history better than they ever could themselves. Old Miss Augusta was an observer of a sort known to him; old maids of her type transcended clans. Taken to tea just yesterday in the clean, magpie maidliness of her hotel room—“Ah Ruth, here’s your great friend”—he saw at once that without hostility to him, she still didn’t wish the marriage to occur, and wondered whether this came of anything she knew. If Augusta half hoped (as he thought Anna and the Judge didn’t know they did) that Ruth would back out at the last, they didn’t know her. Waiting now, he drew his muffler up against the bleaching cold, not flinching at why he had no doubt of her. The kindest woman might leave a lover at the altar. But would keep her word to one who was only—a great friend.

  For a man who was to be married at four, when it was now three—and received into society at five—he had considerable phlegm, standing quiet enough for the pigeons to pick their way round him, paying his formal dress no more heed than the other frozen watchers. He was not the man to care for comments either way, or for the graffiti of the crowd anywhere. The park, he saw, had kept its snow. Once, as children, he and Ruth and the others had skated on the natural lake way uptown, among a few dozen more. Here, on a rink man-made in a bowl of timid park dells, the circling skaters, much dotted with red, moved in a heavy drove bound by the sad, jouncing music—a civic Currier & Ives. Ruth often skated here, disdaining Rockefeller Center—“They put out too many flags for it.”

  Perhaps in reverse of what wives were expected to do for their husbands—to bring the gentler things—she would teach him how to bear with the crowd-life. For unlike the Judge, he could see that for his own times this was going to be necessary to bear. Already, in the enigmatic reversal of the ages, he and his young kind were only self-made men.

  He checked his watch, scanning the entrances. If she didn’t come, he’d go straight on to Borkan’s; she wouldn’t fail him there. Oh, she saw everything, except a resemblance in herself he hoped she didn’t see—and meant to save her from.

  Across the arena, Miss Augusta, who was farsighted, saw him, framed between two mothers whose heads were following their children with doting arc. Though she too was here for a purpose, opposite to his and to her as strong, she watched the crowd like an old campaigner, enjoying it. The city interlude was her life. For excuse and escort, though not today, she had Dog, her long line of Chummies, plus the absolute confidence of her parents’ era—that the city could be circumscribed. Out of it she had almost consciously made a psyche, her life passing in a strong visual state which only the restricted lingo of the new era would dare to call loneliness. From her window in a four-story relic of the early 1900s called the Jackson, she could see hard as a cactus opposite, the Diamond Exchange of New York. If she wanted fountains, a new skyscraper bank had just built her some—Louis XIV could have done it for her no quicker. Her own block had three famous theatres—including the one her father had lost his money in. According with that purer era of matinee idols, the theatre to her was sexual excitement, always seedy even at its brilliantined best, the tiaras always royal paste, the furs rented. There was a race of inhabitants here who didn’t disabuse her of this—homburged men with canes of malacca, Worumbo overcoats covering the last twenty years, and home haircuts. A breed of crones in once-important turbans came out of the corner holes here, in furs the exact color of the pats of horse manure across which, fifty years ago, she had walked to school. It seemed to her that the physical constituents of life repeated themselves well enough. Hot chestnuts came regularly to her corner, on the first of November. If she wanted a sight of wealth, or other crops, the delicatessens had their netted melons and rows of marrons. Theatre crowds, glowing food shops full of neon and fluorescence, nursed her to coziness. Back at the hotel, such was her personal strength that she did not even become a “character.” They could do nothing with her personality there, not even with her rich connections, which were obvious, but of which she made nothing. Truest of city-dwellers, whatever passed before her eyes was already expected, and the thought of enumerating it never crossed her mind.

  Her two rooms were big enough—“London bed-sitters remind me of your place, Aunt Augusta”—in the second a daybed on which Ruth had sometimes slept, and could again. “Bed’s made up,” Augusta had managed to say to her in a moment managed away from Austin. “You can always come. No matter when.” And faltering—for she had defied the family only once—“Simon wouldn’t have to know.” She was proudest of the fact that the family scarcely knew Ruth came there. They never walked, but sat in Augusta’s rooms and talked. It was her inside life.

  Twelve years ago, after that first sight of girl and father in the hallway, and even before any sign of trust from the girl, she’d gone home to educate herself for just such a moment as now. Or for when the full confidence would come. It never had. That expectation had been like her own childish yearning for Simon—which dream it had for a while replaced. If she knew better now on both scores, it was because of this girl. Who by her presence alone had done to her old cousin what she did to everybody—educated them.

  Scanning the crowd, Augusta’s head didn’t move with it like the mothers’. …Through her I’ve had as much inner life as I’m able, and thank God for it. I shot my own one bolt in the family forty-two years ago, when I left Mrs. Delano’s boarding house for the Jackson. If she comes to me now, it won’t be for long….

  Not that her own preparation had been worthless—from direct mail courses in electronics to sex magazines, both of which she gave neatly packaged to the night clerk after she had done with them. She’d been readying herself not for the new era—which women like herself could handle with one wrist—but for what youth, in the embodiment of this girl, might tell her. And so that she might cushion the Judge and them all against the downfall of what he believed to be “his” house.

  For it was Simon she’d first fixed on as the guilty one. … But I’m not to be fooled on Simon or on any of his blood—ours. Young man across the pavilion, I’ve nothing against you for yourself—nothing at all. Except that you’re not the one for her. Not to marry. Oh poor, glorious young man, I know what you are—who should know better than me? You’re—the right one to have told. And to pass on from. For she’ll have told you by now, what she would never let me hear. What I’ve never once let myself—say to myself. Why couldn’t I let myself be fooled? Why can’t I, still?

  Scanning the entrances, Austin said to himself: I’m not bedazzled by her. I love her—and see her clear. I see all of them, clear. She’ll come.

  Scanning him, Augusta said to herself: Oh, why do I fool myself? She’ll go to him. For a time.

  Then they both saw her. She ran prettily out on her skates with short chopping steps, gave herself to the gliding wave of the crowd—a white beret and jacket in the dotted sea of mufflered faces riding intent on the music’s wire—and was lost there. It was always surprising to both watchers—that there wasn’t more of her.

  She emerged first on Augusta’s side, and the old woman, squinting in the dying sun, against the mass of capering boys and toddlers, made out that like any girl she had dressed for her possible role—or so that she might go anywhere. Her mother had used to do the same. In that fur
tam and jacket she could come to the Jackson like any rosy niece, or to the wedding gala which would know the fur was real. Head bent as in meditation, she glided past, holding tight as a prayer book the round muff that the old woman herself had given her—Augusta’s mother’s ermine, tissue-papered against yellow all this time. Anna would recognize it. And must be wild, with waiting. She knew all, of course, in that way servants did. And served Ruth mistakenly—acting as our nurse and duenna. It’s Simon we all really serve.

  As the skater neared Austin, the mass was going so swiftly that he caught only the rear whip of her skirt against the steel-bunched calf he knew so well, ugly and real—then farther on, the whole angle of her, chin up, leaning into the wind. She could still be in hiding; he wasn’t fooled—though all consulted dictionaries of the classic ballet had been no help. The Mannixes themselves had educated him beyond his sphere—like Edwin in a way! For knowledge of her he ought at once to have gone back to his depth of years with them. His heart ached again for his first friend there…David. Who even when they were boys couldn’t bear to see anyone suffer…Ergo Walter, and later, Alice Cooperman. But that was minor. His own father David could never hope to please; trying to atone for his deafness by physical prowess, he never saw that the Judge was jealous of it…As for your mother, David, the dead like her are never only foolish—that was your mistake. But it was through you I first sensed your sister…David’s life with her was spent in those constant acts of sympathy, unphrased, terrified, but not direct—because he wasn’t sure of her circumstance. She never told…It was harder now to see the real skater, in this orange light spreading the afternoon before it fell. But she too was never taught to trust in other people’s suffering, to let it be. That form of Christian trust. She can’t bear it yet, either. Ergo, David—she’ll come to me.

  Augusta, straining, could no longer distinguish that white in the whirl of the others, but she could see the tall young man, next to a couple who just then pounced on a boy and dragged him from the ice, struggling. … I never was fooled. Simon never believed David was his son. It was never the deafness. And it was worse after her death than before. That way he could revile Mirriam’s memory, and justify Ruth in his heart—she did what he wanted to…Oh, never justified to me, Mirriam—whom the two of you laughed over, don’t I know!…But in his poor, enlarged Job-heart. Half the Jewish fathers in the world are Jobs to something. Like that little money-Job they laughed at too—my father. The rest are like Meyer…Simon’s favoring of Ruth was always multiple. Beneath the need to protect and conceal, which was paramount, were all these other motives—for in a way, Ruth is himself. Isn’t she, Mirriam? And in a way, she is you to him now, because she has a great flaw. But not an obvious flaw like David’s. And he is certain she is his child. So the natural parent can love his child—and pounce on him…Now I’m an old woman, I can see I too was an unnatural daughter. Like us all. If she comes to me—shall I tell her that?

  The skater came around and around again, to them both, for they were now opposite each other. On the swelling light of the music, she rose and fell, a white jacket among other whites. No red on me anywhere now, Austin. Somewhere beneath a skating skirt long enough for a wedding, a bride’s spot of blue, Augusta. Maybe I’m coming to you both. It was the moment when the afternoon fell, the woods parted in farther and farther dusk, and the snow became the music. Once more she passed them, skating the thin, silver line of her own thoughts, their choral behind her—for the young man had seen Augusta now. “Yes, here I am, the groom.” And she had acknowledged him. …“We’re on opposite sides. She can’t come to us both.”

  She saw them! But she wasn’t alone; neither of them had ever really thought it; the assoluta never really dances alone. Madame, if she were here, would say it too, Austin thought. Who it is that still dances with her in the whiteness of white—in that samite in which we clothe all the dead that still live.

  Augusta, watching him, thought, “Yes, she has a great flaw, and that attracts all of us, young man, you too.” The girl was skating slower now…Her parents had always told how they skated together the night before their wedding—which was all that era would allow—to be told. It’s a family story…But only she knows that I watched them there. And walked home reconciled—at the sight of such a beginning—saying, “Chummie, the city is beautiful.” So I’ve no doubt who’s dancing at her side now. Oh, Cousin Simon, so controlled, so calculating since our cradles, ever only cousin to me—how you fear the hysteric in her, as you did in her mother—and admire it! What are they not capable of! Oh, what a catch you dance to, Simon, your syntax and your coattails flying! You’re in a wheelchair just to rest from it—don’t I know.

  Across the rink, the young man’s eyes said to her: She’s mine.

  Across it, Augusta shook her head at him: To my cousin, if to anyone—she’s been the perpetration of all his controls.

  But in the end it was simple. On the next round, the girl waved to Austin, but respectful as always, veered toward the old woman. Augusta, military in her tweed, fair-dealing as a duelist, stumped around to the entrance side—and there they three were.

  In her whimsical way, she looked up at them, one to the other, while she sat and took off her skates. They had only to understand her. And tell her themselves what they wanted of her. When she was quite sure they wouldn’t, she stood up and flicked a small box Austin was carrying. “What’s that?”

  “You’re entering a family that hallmarks its sentiments.” His own father had given his mother the Nonesuch Weekend Book of June 1924—another relished but tender joke.

  “You think we don’t?” But she took the package, like a lure.

  He had his daring, Augusta thought. Plays his allegiances well. A habit we share.

  “Found it in the Charing Cross Road.”

  It was a Florentine-printed volume of excerpts from the Encyclopedia Spettacolo, giving the classifications of the ballet Over Ruth’s shoulder, Augusta, who knew Italian from a coral-beaded year at a Miss Beard’s-style pensione in Perugia, read a passage aloud. “A cominciare dé 1766 troviamo nei programmi le prime distinzioni: quella del generi (ballerini ‘seri’, ‘di mezzo-carattere’ e grotteschi’) e quella della gerachie: ‘primi ballerini seri assoluta’…”

  Augusta was to be a functionary here and knew it, already hearing it in her own voice. “There’s a glossary at the back. But that’s French.” She caught a glimpse of it “Demi-plié; fouetté.”

  “A vocabulary of life,” said the girl. “Particularly if you don’t know much life. Or much French.” But she was smiling. He could take it that she wasn’t going to go on with it.

  “Come to a wedding.” He spoke to them equally.

  For a moment, he and the old woman were a twosome, watching the long line of her neck as she leaned away from them in the projection that this kind could make of their bodies—toward the rink of people and past them to the high, fractured walls of the middle city, only the knot of hair, which she had let grow, holding her back. He had an impulse to grasp it. She turned to him before he had to.

  Augusta, missing Chummie, looked down at her boots. Or come to me, at the Jackson—am I a fool, not to say it?

  “Augusta—?” said the girl.

  A violet steam rose from the snow. Out on the rink, the few skates left made a sound of thawing. Otherwise how could they have stood here so heedless, so warm?

  “It’s natural,” Augusta said gruffly.

  “Your boots,” said her young cousin in a choking voice, her eyes bright and sad. “Your beautiful boots.”

  The lights sprang up as Austin led them out of the park. They all looked properly dressed.

  The marriage took place on time—in what Judge Borkan called his “front” room, although all fourteen, through most of which they were conducted, banded “the most comprehensive view of the park you’re likely to find”—at this hour duly magical. “Front room” in Borkan’s heavy consonants was scarcely the term for this forty-foot expanse, whos
e stilted bergères and “Louie” mirrors aggrievedly faced east, to the side of the park they should have been on. Borkan led the couple to a positive altar of photographs, flanked with flowers. Farsighted as Augusta was, the large, vacuous script in which a vanished society had signed them was clear. “Your late wife was a DeKalb?”

  Borkan assured her of it. “A street in the Bronx is named for them.”

  “Brooklyn,” Austin said automatically. And suddenly he and Ruth burst out laughing. “Not bad for a Maine boy,” Austin said. Borkan, squinting critically at their group, like a photographer, pinned a flower on each of the women—a florist doing it for free. “I’m nervous,” he said, laughing. A line of warts along one cheek extended his smile. “Never married anyone before. After all, I was a lawyer to the theatre trade. Never dealt with real criminals before.”

  The wedding party stood up straighter—all except Ruth, who was looking out the window, past the passionate flow of the drapes. Noting that, Borkan faced the three that way, his back to it. They all had a view of the park. Though the air was dusking, they all stared into it as if they were seeing it—while Borkan began to address the couple in a short, neatly phrased homily on life, life in common, and their participation in common life. The bergères attended it well. And cum grano salis, the photographs.

  These mixed marriages were always awkward affairs, Austin was thinking, secretly relieved his parents weren’t here. In recent years as guest or even attendant he had seen quite a few. The place was rarely right, nor the minister; a spiritual uncertainty hovered, always coming out somewhere, in the wrong hues between flowers and. bridesmaids, or between the two sides of anecdote. He shifted his eyes to Borkan. His grandfather had had a line of warts like those. “Like the girl, don’t you, boy. Oh, I know you’re just friends.” An old gaffer at the rink had skated like James, too. Austin glanced toward where the rink should be in the twilight window. But James would never have let us go on seeing him dead; he was a practical man. This was an idea so much in his bride’s style that he looked down at her—had they already begun to exchange?