Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker

by David Remnick

  They had been living in hotels for thirty years now.

  In the evenings they played two-handed rummy, or Mr. Morrison read aloud while Mrs. Morrison sewed. She had never been a slave to a book.

  Sometimes the manager of the hotel would drop in to see if they were comfortable. They always were.

  After Mr. Morrison left for his office in the mornings, Mrs. Morrison usually dropped in at Dennison’s to work for a bit on the parchment shade she was making, or ran up to McCreery’s to do a bit of shopping and perhaps to buy the new book of crocheted-work patterns. Sometimes in the afternoons a friend or two dropped in and Mrs. Morrison ordered hot water and toast and made tea in her own tea set.

  At four, Mr. Morrison came home and they took a little walk before dinner. Mr. Morrison said he liked to work up an appetite.

  ONE morning Mrs. Morrison finished her parchment shade. She could hardly believe it, as it was rather an elaborate shade. But she wrapped it in tissue paper and put her name on it and said she would call for it the next day. She didn’t like to be seen carrying a parcel. She was like her mother that way. And as it was only half past eleven, she decided she would run up to Maillard’s for lunch. She hadn’t been to their new place.

  As she settled herself in the bus and got her dime out, she planned what she would eat. She had just decided on a chicken patty with mushrooms and something a little sticky for dessert, when she noticed the young girl in the seat in front of her. She seemed very nervous. Every time the bus stopped, she squirmed about and tapped her fingers on the window sill, and several times, Mrs. Morrison thought, she was going to run out of the door.

  At Thirty-fourth Street, a young man got on, and slid into the seat beside the girl. “Hello, Helpless,” he said.

  “Helpless is a kind name for it,” she said.

  “There’s a shorter and uglier word, but I don’t know it.”

  “Well, if you’ll tell me where we went and what we did after we left George’s, I’ll believe you,” she said.

  “We went to Tony’s. And we left you in the cab with George. You were talking perfectly all right. And pretty soon the cab-driver came in and said, ‘Say, Mister, them two friends of yours is down the areaway.’”

  “That’s a dirty lie.”

  “You wouldn’t move for quite a while. You said you were comfortable and wanted to talk.”

  “Well, I’m through. When I act like that it’s time to quit. I mean it. What happened then?”

  “Don’t you remember saying you wanted to ride to Atlantic City in a hansom cab. You were a riot. And you kept wanting to dance, only George wouldn’t get up because his shirt was bulging in front.”

  “Well, I’m through. I mean it. It seems to me I remember some other people. Didn’t one man have a banjo?”

  “You asked them over, and they were terrible. You thought you could sing, and finally the girl who was with this guy got sore and left.”

  “I asked them over? Well, I’m through.”

  They were silent for a minute.

  “Where are you all going tonight?” she asked.

  “Nick’s.”

  “What’s the matter with Tony’s?”

  “Oh, he’s getting to be an awful crab. He put Roy out when he started to throw that cheese.”

  “Where’s Nick’s?”

  “Six-forty-three West Eleventh Street. Say, look here, Foolish, you look terrible. How about just one whiskey sour.”

  “For medicinal purposes only. Just one.”

  “That’s what I said. Just one. Come on. Pull yourself together.”

  They got off, and Mrs. Morrison rode on to Maillard’s.

  WHEN Mr. Morrison came home that evening, she had her hat on. Mr. Morrison noticed that it was her new hat. “I thought we might eat out for a change,” she told him. “Walk down to the old part of town and find some little place there.”

  “Why, yes,” said Mr. Morrison. “How about the Grosvenor?”

  “Someone, I forget just who it was, was telling me of a little place in Eleventh Street. I think she said it was an Italian place.”

  “Good,” said Mr. Morrison heartily. “I haven’t had any spaghetti for a long time.”

  THE Eleventh Street house had a brownstone front, not unlike the house Mr. and Mrs. Morrison had lived in. There was no sign in front of it.

  “Ring the bell, anyway,” said Mrs. Morrison. “A great many places don’t have signs. Tiffany’s, for instance.”

  Mr. Morrison rang the bell.

  A dark gentleman opened the door.

  “What you want?” he asked.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Morrison. “But we heard that this place was a restaurant.”

  “You got a card?”

  “Certainly,” said Mr. Morrison. He handed the dark gentleman a card. It said “Harold Lamson Morrison” on it.

  “You got the wrong place.” The dark gentleman closed the door.

  “Looks as though you had the wrong address, Mother,” Mr. Morrison said. They turned back toward Fifth Avenue, and took the bus home.

  It was just fifteen minutes before closing time when they entered the dining-room. The headwaiter showed them to their table. He knew they were late.

  They studied the menu.

  “I’ll have the regular dinner, Harry,” said Mrs. Morrison.

  “Two regular dinners,” Mr. Morrison told the waiter.

  As Mrs. Morrison waited for her consommé vermicelli, she leaned over and picked a dead leaf from the fern in the etched silver bowl.

  [1929]

  FRANK CONROY

  MIDAIR

  A SUNNY, WINDY DAY ON THE LOWER East Side of New York. The year is 1942. Sean, aged six, is being more or less pulled along the sidewalk by his father, who has shown up from nowhere to take him home from school. Sean tries to keep the pace, although he does not remember the last time he has seen this big, exuberant man, nor is he altogether sure that he trusts him. Mary, on the other side, is nine. Her legs are longer, and she seems happy, skipping every now and then, shouting into the wind, calling him Daddy. Sean cannot hear what they’re saying except in fragments—the wind tears at the words. His hand, wrist, and part of his forearm are enclosed in his father’s fist. The big man strides along, red-faced, chin jutting forward proudly, his whole carriage suggesting the eagerness and confidence of a soldier marching forward to receive some important, hard-won medal.

  He is not a soldier, as Sean’s mother has recently explained. He is not in the Army (although a war is going on) but in something called a rest home, where people go in order to rest. He does not seem tired, Sean thinks.

  “It’ll be a different story now, by God,” his father says as they turn the corner onto Seventh Street. “A completely different story.” Energy seems to radiate from the man like an electrical charge. His body carries a pale-blue corona, and when he speaks his white teeth give off white lightning. “What a day!” He lets go of the children’s hands and makes a sweeping gesture. “An absolute pip of a day. Look at that blue sky! The clouds! Seventh Street! Look how vivid the colors are!”

  Sean cannot look. He is preoccupied with the unnatural force of his father’s enthusiasm. It is as if all that has been pointed out is too far away to be seen. The boy’s awareness is focused on the small bubble of space immediately surrounding himself, his father, and his sister. Within that area he sees clearly—as if his life depended on it—and there is no part of him left over to see anything else.

  They reach the tenement building and climb the stoop. His father hesitates at the door.

  “The key,” he says.

  “Mother has it,” Mary says.

  “You haven’t got it?” He rolls his head in exasperation.

  “I’m sorry.” Mary is afraid she has failed him. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  Sean is uneasy with her use of the word “Daddy.” It sounds strange, since they never use it. It is not part of their domestic vocabulary. On those extremely rare occasions when
Sean, Mary, and their mother ever mention the man, the word they have always used is “Father.”

  Mrs. Rosenblum, second floor rear, emerges from the house.

  “Good morning,” his father says, smiling, catching the door. “In you go, children.”

  Mrs. Rosenblum has never seen this big man before but recognizes, from his expensive clothes and confident manner, that he is a gentleman, and the father of the children. A quick glance at Mary, smiling as he touches her head, confirms everything.

  “Nice,” Mrs. Rosenblum says. “Very nice.”

  Inside, Sean’s father takes the steps two at a time. The children follow up to the top floor—the fourth—and find him standing at the door to the apartment, trying the knob.

  “No key here, either, I suppose.”

  “It’s the same one,” Mary says.

  He gives the door a hard push, as if testing. Then he steps back, looks around, and notices the iron ladder leading up to the hatch and the roof.

  “Aha! More than one way to skin a cat.” He strides over to the ladder and begins to climb. “Follow me, buckos. Up the mainmast!”

  “Daddy, what are you doing?” Mary cries.

  “We’ll use the fire escape.” He pushes up the hatch and sunlight pours down. “Come on. It’s fun!”

  Sean can hear the wind whistling up there as his father climbs through. Mary hesitates an instant and then mounts the ladder. As she approaches the top, Sean follows her. He ascends into the sunshine and the wind.

  The big man moves rapidly across the tarred roof to the rear of the building and the twin hoops of the fire-escape railing. He shouts back at the children, but his words are lost. He beckons, turns, and grabs the railings. His feet go over the edge and he begins to descend. Then he stops—his head and shoulders visible—and shouts again. Mary moves forward, the big man sinks out of sight, and Sean follows.

  The boy steps to the edge and looks over. His father is ten feet below, on the fire-escape landing, red face upturned.

  “Come on!” The white teeth flash. “The window’s open.”

  The wind whips Mary’s skirt around her knees as she goes over. She has to stop and push the hair out of her eyes. When she reaches the landing below, Sean grabs the hoops. Five floors down, a sheet of newspaper flutters across the cement at the bottom of the airshaft. It seems no bigger than a page from a book. He climbs down. Pigeons rise from the airshaft and scatter. On the landing, he sees his father, already inside, lifting Mary through the kitchen window. He follows quickly on his own.

  The kitchen, although entirely familiar in every detail, seems slightly odd in its totality. The abruptness of the entry—without the usual preparation of the other rooms—tinges the scene with unreality. Sean follows his father and sister through the kitchen, into the hall, and to the doorway of his mother’s room. His father does not enter but simply stops and looks.

  “Have you been here before?” Sean asks.

  “Of course he has, silly,” Mary says rapidly.

  His father turns. “Don’t you remember?”

  “I don’t think so,” Sean says.

  As they pass the main door to the apartment, toward the front of the hall, his father pauses to slip on the chain lock.

  FOR more than an hour they have been rearranging the books on the living-room shelves, putting them in alphabetical order by author. Sean’s father stops every now and then, with some favorite book, to do a dramatic reading. The readings become more and more dramatic. He leans down to the children to emphasize the dialogue, shouting in different voices, gesticulating with his free arm in the air, making faces. But then, abruptly, his mood changes.

  “The windows are filthy,” he says angrily, striding back and forth from one to another, peering at the glass. The books are forgotten now as he goes to the kitchen. Mary quickly pushes them over to the foot of the bookcase. Sean helps. While doing this, they look very quickly, almost furtively, into each other’s eyes. It takes a fraction of a second, but Sean understands. He is aware that his father’s unexplained abandonment of an activity in which he had appeared to be so deeply involved has frightened Mary. His own feelings are complex—he is gratified that she is scared, since in his opinion she should have been scared all along, while at the same time his own fear, because of hers, escalates a notch.

  “What’s going to happen?” Sean asks quietly.

  “Nothing. It’s O.K.” She pretends not to be afraid.

  “Get Mother.” The sound of water running in the kitchen.

  Mary considers this. “It’s O.K. She’ll come home from work the way she always does.”

  “That’s a long time. That’s too long.”

  The big man returns with a bucket and some rags. His face seems even more flushed. “We’ll do it ourselves. Wait till you see the difference.” He moves to the central window, and they are drawn in his wake. Sean recognizes a shift in the atmosphere: before, with the books, there was at least a pretense of the three of them doing something together—a game they might all enjoy—but now his father’s attention has narrowed and intensified onto the question of the windows. He seems barely aware of the children.

  He washes the panes with rapid, sweeping movements. Then he opens the lower frame, bends through, turns, and sits on the sill to do the outside. Sean can see his father’s face, concentrated, frowning, eyes searching the glass for streaks.

  Sean begins to move backward.

  “No,” Mary says quickly. “We have to stay.”

  The boy stops beside the rocking chair where his mother sits after dinner.

  The big man reenters, and steps back to regard the results of his work. “Much better. Much, much better.” He moves on to the next window. “Fresh water, Mary. Take the bucket.”

  Mary obeys, and goes back to the kitchen.

  The big man stares down at the street. Sean stays by the rocking chair.

  “You don’t remember,” the big man says. “Well, that’s all right. Time is different for children. In any case, the past is behind us now. What counts is the future.” He gives a short, barking laugh. “Another cliché rediscovered! But that’s the way it is. You have to penetrate the clichés, you have to live them out to find out how true they are. What a joke!”

  Mary brings the bucket of water to his side. Suddenly he moves closer to the window. He has seen something on the street.

  “God damn.” He moves back rapidly. He turns and runs down the hall to the kitchen. Sean and Mary can see him closing and locking the rear windows. “Bastards!” he shouts.

  Mary moves sideways to glance through the window to the street.

  “What is it?” Sean asks.

  “An ambulance.” Her voice is beginning to quaver. “It must be that ambulance.”

  Now he comes back into the living room and paces. Then he rushes to the newly washed window, opens it, and tears the gauzy curtains from the rod and throws them aside. Sean can see Mary flinch as the curtains are torn. The big man moves from one window to the next, opening them and tearing away the curtains. Wind rushes through the room. Torn curtains rise from the floor and swirl about.

  He gathers the children and sits down on the couch, his arms around their shoulders. Sean feels crushed and tries to adjust his position, but his father only tightens his grip. The big man is breathing fast, staring into the hall, at the door.

  “Daddy,” Mary says. “It hurts.”

  A slight release of pressure, but Sean is still held so tightly to the man’s side he can barely move.

  “Oh, the bastards,” his father says. “The tricky bastards.”

  The buzzer sounds. Then, after a moment, a knock on the door. The big man’s grip tightens.

  Another knock. The sound of a key. Sean watches the door open a few inches until the chain pulls it short. He sees the glint of an eye.

  “Mr. Kennedy? This is Dr. Silverman. Would you open the door, please?”

  “Alone, are you, Doctor?” An almost lighthearted tone.

&nbs
p; A moment’s pause. “No. I have Bob and James here with me.” A calm voice, reassuring to Sean. “Please let us in.”

  “The goon squad,” his father says.

  “Bob in particular is very concerned. And so am I.”

  “Bob is a Judas.”

  “Mr. Kennedy. Be reasonable. We’ve been through this before, after all.”

  “No, no.” As if correcting a slow student. “This is different. I’m through with you people. I’m through with all of that. I’ve come home, I’m here with my children, and I’m going to stay.”

  A pause. “Yes. I can see the children.”

  “We’ve been having a fine time. We’ve been washing the windows, Doctor.” An almost inaudible chuckle.

  “Mr. Kennedy, I implore you to open the door. We simply must come in. We must discuss your plans.”

  “I’m not going to open the door. And neither are you. What we have here, Doctor, is a Mexican standoff. Do you get my meaning?”

  “I’m very sorry to hear you say that.” Another pause—longer this time. “Bob would like a word with you.”

  “Mr. Kennedy? This is Bob.” A younger voice.

  “I’m not coming back, Bob. Don’t try any crap with me. I know why you’re here.”

  “I’m worried about you. You’re flying. You know that.”

  “Got the little white jacket, eh, Bob? The one with the funny sleeves?”

  “Look, if you don’t come back they’ll assign me to Mr. Farnsworth. You wouldn’t do that to me. Please.”

  “Cut the crap, Bob.”

  “Listen. I’m with you. You know that. I mean, how many times have we talked about your—”

  A tremendous crash as the door is kicked in, the wall splintering where the chain has come away. Sean is aware that things are happening very fast now, and yet he can see it all with remarkable clarity. Wood chips drift lazily through the air. Three men rush through the door—two in white uniforms, one in ordinary clothes. He knows they are running toward the couch as fast as they can—their faces frozen masks of strain—but time itself seems to have slowed down.