Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker

by David Remnick

  In time, the visit was over. Gary took the present and thanked his grandmother, and Darcy was at last able to lead him back to the apartment. It was Natalie’s turn tonight to go to the movies—she and Darcy went separately, an arrangement necessitated by financial stringencies but nevertheless without doubt one cause accounting for the poor success of their marriage—and Darcy hoped with all his heart that when he returned, his wife would be gone. But when he and Gary entered the apartment, there she was, right in the foyer, still fixing her hat at the mirror.

  She kept talking to Gary, asking him did he have a nice time in the park? Did he go on the swing? Did he play with Donald?

  “No, I didn’t play with Donald,” Gary said.

  “You didn’t?” Natalie said. “Why? Why didn’t you play with Donald?”

  Darcy wanted to groan aloud. Here it came. He just didn’t have the energy in him for another flare-up with Natalie, and didn’t know what he would do if she let out at him now, but luck was with him; Gary remembered his television programs, in the nick of time, and went darting off into the living room.

  “What happened in the park?” Natalie said, confronting her husband.

  “Nothing,” Darcy said. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Then why didn’t he play with Donald?” she said. “Did they have a fight? Answer me.”

  “Natalie!” Darcy said. Something had got into him. It was an involuntary outburst. He found himself holding her by the shoulders, almost shaking her. She looked at him in wonder.

  “Let go of my dress,” she said, “you’re getting it all wrinkled.”

  “What happened to you, Natalie? How did it happen?” He gripped her shoulders tighter. He couldn’t stop himself. He had had more than he could stand, but maybe it was all really because he saw her now—for once—not in an apron and house dress but wearing a nice blue linen dress, with white gloves and a little white piqué hat. She looked pretty, fresh and youthful, and it made him ache to see her like this. “How the dickens does a person change so completely?” he cried.

  He reminded her how it had been ten and eleven years ago—how they took ferryboat rides all over New York Bay, how they spent whole afternoons just walking together in the Botanical Gardens, how they went to Lewisohn Stadium and Carnegie Hall and discussed Toscanini by the hour. He even reminded her of the time she had bought him a book of Japanese poems in translation.

  “What are you talking about?” she said, flushing. “What book of Japanese poems?”

  “Yes, Japanese poems—you remember, ‘The Jade Garden,’” he went on passionately, still, however, holding his voice down—that hushed, agonized, damnable technique the Darcys had developed over the years so that they could have their quarrels and not disturb Gary and his inner equilibrium. “When I was in the hospital,” Darcy said. “When I had my tonsils out.”

  “A remainder,” she said, twisting and turning, trying to escape, to get away from his eyes. “Forty-seven cents—I bought it in a drugstore. What are you bringing that up for now, after all these years—”

  She stopped. She became suddenly transformed, the guilt and unhappiness in her turning all at once into a blind, senseless rage. “What is that?” she said, pointing. “How did that get there? Did she give it to him?”

  It was the sweater, lying on a chair in the foyer. Darcy had forgotten. Distracted as he was, he had forgotten all about the sweater!

  “Is that why you took Gary to the park—to meet your mother? Is that why he couldn’t play with Donald?”

  “Yes!” Darcy said. “Yes! I took him to meet my mother.”

  “Didn’t I expressly forbid it? Didn’t I tell you a million times I never wanted that woman near him again?”

  “She’s his grandmother,” Darcy said. “She has a right. I don’t care what you told me!”

  Natalie then became altogether uncontrolled and did something so painful, so dismaying, so unspeakable, that a shiver went through Darcy. She spat in his face.

  “Natalie,” he said, “Natalie, don’t you ever do that again.”

  “I’ll do it whenever I feel like!” she said, and spat in his face again.

  Darcy struck her—not hard, a glancing blow, more a light slap really than a blow. He immediately regained control over himself and turned away, now ignoring her completely.

  She was still hysterical. “You’ll do everything I tell you, do you hear me? After I go, you’ll open the couch and fix the bed. You’ll give Gary his bath. You’ll put him to sleep. You’ll mop the floor. And you’ll stay away from your mother. Nincompoop,” she said. “Coward!”

  SHE left. The place was very quiet now except, of course, for the gunplay and Western voices in the living room. “Got the petition ready, Lester?”

  “Comin’ along slow, Dude. Folks ain’t a-signin’. . . .”

  Darcy wasn’t in the least worked up and bedeviled any longer. It was surprising how clearheaded you could become, once you made your mind up on a definite course of action, regardless of the possible consequences. It was a relief. Darcy was tired of being helpless and uncertain all the time, flopping around like a man drowning in the middle of the ocean. Darcy was tired of meanness.

  He calmly supervised Gary’s play when the child finished with the television and turned to his electric trains. Later, he got the boy ready for bed, taking out his pajamas, giving him his bath, watching him brush his teeth. When Gary fell asleep, Darcy opened the couch in the living room and arranged the bedding, although he wouldn’t be sleeping there tonight. He packed his briefcase—they had one good suitcase and he preferred to let Natalie have it. And now as he waited for the time to pass, he sat in Gary’s bedroom and looked at the face of his son, sweet and dear in sleep.

  In Darcy’s apartment house, they had the self-service elevator and the stairs. You could always tell when somebody downstairs in the lobby took the elevator—you heard a certain click. Around eleven o’clock, the click came, and Darcy knew his wife was on the way up. He could leave now. Gary would only be alone in the apartment a few seconds. Darcy picked up the briefcase and went out into the hall and part way down the first flight of stairs. In another moment or two, the elevator door swung open. In the murky lighting from the landing, he watched his wife as she walked across the tiled hall to the door of their apartment, never once realizing that he was standing there looking at her all the time. She opened the door and went in, and Darcy walked swiftly on down the stairs.

  ANGUS was a bachelor and had a swanky bachelor’s apartment in a residential hotel on the West Side. Darcy took the subway and went straight down there, late as it was. He walked in and said without preliminary that he was having no part of the 990 business. He wouldn’t be bulldozed and he wanted the blueprints—nobody was presenting him with a fait accompli. Darcy spoke with grim determination, but Angus, who naturally had no way of knowing what had transpired that evening at the Jackson Heights apartment, never dreamed he was dealing with a radically changed man and made the mistake of treating him lightly.

  “Jack Dalton of the U.S. Marines,” Angus said. The blueprints were staying right where they were, Angus said. Everything was going to proceed exactly according to schedule, and there wasn’t a damn thing Darcy could do about it, so what was he raising an unnecessary holler for? Angus said talk, talk, but in the last analysis Darcy knew good and well he would cave in and back down when the going got rough.

  “You think so?” Darcy said.

  “Sure,” Angus said. “What the hell are you going around trying to create an impression for? You’re a nonentity.”

  Darcy socked him on the nose, for the second time that night resorting to physical violence. Angus’s eyes streamed profusely. He brought his hand up to his nose and then looked into his palm but his nose wasn’t bleeding. “Boy!” he said, gulping.

  Darcy banged out of the place. He didn’t need the blueprints. The way he felt now, he didn’t care about fait accomplis or reprisals or anything, and when he reached the sidewalk down
stairs, he was still so charged with nervous tension that he did a nonsensical, almost deranged thing, one of those oddity items you always read in the papers: He attacked a car. It was parked in front of the building where Angus lived, a big black convertible—that fat, hateful symbol of graft, that smug reward for corruption, along with Angus’s swanky bachelor apartment, along with the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar custom-tailored suits he always wore. Darcy methodically went to work on the tires, letting the air out.

  A short, stout, middle-aged man Darcy had never seen before in his life came trotting out of the apartment building, dancing on the tips of his toes and holding up his hands in consternation. “Here, here, young man!” he exclaimed. “What is this? Stop! Please leave my car alone!”

  “What?” Darcy said, glaring. The stranger took fright immediately and went scurrying back into the building. For a moment, Darcy thought of running after him to explain, to apologize, but then he realized that he’d get in trouble if he hung around there any longer, that he might be arrested.

  What did I need all this excitement for, he asked himself. What have I done? What good is it? He felt deflated, the reaction setting in now, and as he walked along the dead deserted streets, his mind grew filled with dismal second thoughts. He was married to Natalie, he had a child to support. How can I leave them, he wondered. And what was I trying to prove up there in the hotel, socking Angus on the nose? When you come right down to it, nobody stands up to professional hoodlums. In his heart, Darcy was beginning to suspect the ignominious truth: that in all likelihood he would cave in; that he would probably go right back to Natalie; that in the end you never succeeded in changing anything. And what did I want from the car, he wondered dejectedly—a car owned, no doubt, by a thoroughly respectable man who has worked hard and honorably to obtain it? The car surely was the most idiotic thing of all.

  DARCY rode to the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn—a local train all the way, making every station stop at that time of night—and got a room in the old wing. In the morning, he got up and shaved and showered, but he didn’t go to work.

  For the next four days, he didn’t do much of anything. He kept pretty close to the hotel, wandering around in the lobby, looking at the people there at the bars or downstairs in the swimming pool. It was a weird, unreal kind of existence and soon Darcy had the feeling the hotel personnel were beginning to stare at him. Maybe Darcy imagined the stares, but in any case on the morning of the fifth day he checked out of the hotel, and went down to the department.

  As he walked in, Angus took one look at him and immediately let out a strange, mystifying howl. “See?” he yelled, not at Darcy but at Colie. “See, you dumb little pest? There he is! I told you—I didn’t make the deal! Nobody murdered him! Nobody abducted him! Do you believe me now?”

  “Leave me alone,” Colie said. “I’m exhausted. I’m a mental wreck.”

  “Conscience, conscience!” Angus said bitterly.

  Darcy watched and listened in wonder, but actually it wasn’t so mystifying, and in a few moments he had it all straightened out. What had happened was that when the office called up to inquire where he was, Natalie, understandably enough, was too ashamed to tell the truth—that her husband had left her following a domestic quarrel. She had been evasive. She had said she had no idea where he was or why he had gone away or what had happened to him.

  Colie had feared the worst. He had thought Angus had made the deal secretly, and that the thugs had already gotten ahold of Darcy. And so, night and day, every minute of the time Darcy had spent at the St. George, Colie had been on Angus’s neck, driving him crazy.

  “You wait,” Angus said, talking to Darcy now. “You’ll get yours yet.” Angus was sick and tired of everything. The 990 deal was dead. He had brought the blueprints back to the office and called all bets off, explaining that he was in no position to undertake ambitious ventures. “I’ll take care of you,” he said to Darcy, and walked out of the office, still muttering angrily.

  Colie and Darcy worked side by side all day, and then when it was time to go home, Colie stood up and insisted on shaking hands. “Personally, I think you made the wrong decision,” he said sadly. Apparently Mrs. Colie was still away at Lake Placid. “But if that’s the way you felt about it, then that’s the way it had to be. Because people have to go according to their makeup. What’s the use? We’re none of us strong enough to fight against our nature. I know.”

  He turned and left. Darcy waited a few moments and then walked to the elevators in the hall.

  The thousands and thousands of Civil Service employees poured out of the big, dirty municipal buildings and streamed off to the various subway entrances. Soon, in the whole City Hall district there were only scattered groups of people here and there on the streets. Darcy idled about, drifting aimlessly. After some time, he walked into the Old Commercial and managed to kill an hour or two there. Around eight o’clock, he got up from the table and did what he knew all along he would do. He went into the phone booth and called up Natalie.

  She didn’t burst out at him or cry when she heard his voice at the other end of the wire. She kept controlled. They were both stiff and self-conscious.

  “I’m coming home,” Darcy said.

  “Oh?” Natalie said.

  Darcy faltered. “I don’t quite know how to take that as an answer. What do you mean, ‘Oh’?”

  “Nothing—‘Oh’ . . .”

  “Do you want me to come home?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Where am I? What difference does it make where I am? I’m in a public phone booth, downtown. Do you want me to come home?”

  “Do what you like. Whatever will make you happy.”

  Again Darcy halted. “I don’t quite know how to take that as an—”

  “Do you love me?” Natalie interrupted.

  “What?” Darcy said.

  “Do you love me?”

  “Yes,” Darcy said.

  She kept silent. Darcy didn’t know what to say, and for a moment or two they just stayed there holding the phone at each end, nothing happening. Finally Natalie spoke. “Then all right,” she said, slowly, quietly, and hung up.

  Gary was asleep in the bedroom when Darcy came home. The house was quiet. It looked tidy and neat and pleasant. Natalie didn’t speak. She wasn’t mad—just neutral. Darcy didn’t say anything, either. Natalie brought him his dinner—lamb chops, green peas, and a glass of milk. When she had finished putting the food on the table, she quickly left the kitchen.

  Darcy could tell the lamb chops were specially prepared; they were panbroiled and looked appetizing. He started to cut into one of them, but just then he saw the note. It hadn’t been there a moment before. Natalie must have slipped it onto the table as she walked out of the kitchen. He put his knife and fork down and took the note.

  This is what it said:

  Dear Arnold,

  You have always said how wonderful it was to have a nice home and a wife and a son such as you have. At least, I know, you are really a devoted family man. But I must admit that I do not really know you as well as I thought, because of what you did. I realize it was done in a moment of great anger, despair, and frustration. But you must never do this again, at least without consulting me first. We must discuss things. There must be no concealed problems that cause needless inner conflicts.

  Arnold, I think you are really very nice. I am very unhappy away from you and I know that now. You are good-natured, intelligent, and you like to do favors for other people. Of course, you have a few faults. You are quite stubborn and you have admitted this yourself. Another fault is the fact that you are too impulsive and emotional. Every expression on my face, every word and gesture of mine seems to affect you to a degree never intended by me.

  I propose not to say anything further to you about the awful thing you did. Let it all be forgotten. Gary was very ill when you left and I was all alone. I have no parents, sisters, or brothers. That is why you should never have done what you di
d! Between Gary and you, I was frantic. Then, I couldn’t tell anyone about this! The whole time, I never slept and ate practically nothing. I lost eleven pounds in four days.

  Gary is much better. At first, he will be a little shy with you; but I believe he will forget eventually. Act normally with him, as though nothing untoward took place.

  Love,

  Your Natalie

  He finished the note and started to read it all over again, but suddenly he stopped. He couldn’t go on. He folded the paper carefully and then covered it with his hand. Now the refrigerator motor hit, the current automatically switching on the way it does in electric refrigerators. Darcy started counting silently, one, two, three, four, five, continuing until the current should go off again. In the stillness of the kitchen, the motor throbbed and throbbed, like a beating heart, and Darcy counted fiercely, concentrating his whole mind on this pointless, peculiar little task.

  [1953]

  LUDWIG BEMELMANS

  MESPOULETS OF THE SPLENDIDE

  “WHEN I SAY Le chien est utile,’ there is one proposition. When I say ‘Je crois que le chien est utile,’ there are two. When I say ‘Je crois que le chien est utile quand il garde la maison,’ how many propositions are there?”

  “Three.”

  “Very good.”

  Mespoulets, the waiter whose bus boy I was, nodded gravely in approval. At that moment Monsieur Victor, the maître d’hôtel, walked through our section of tables, and the other waiters nearby stopped talking to each other, straightened a tablecloth here, moved a chair there, arranged their side towels smoothly over their arms, tugged at their jackets, and pulled their bow ties. Only Mespoulets was indifferent. He walked slowly toward the pantry, past Monsieur Victor, holding my arm. I walked with him and he continued the instruction.

  “‘L’abeille fait du miel.’ The verb ‘fait’ in this sentence in itself is insufficient. It does not say what the bee does, therefore we round out the idea by adding the words ‘du miel.’ These words are called ‘un complément.’ The sentence ‘L’abeille fait du miel’ contains then what?”