Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker

by David Remnick

  “Read! Read!”

  He put the paper down and picked her up and when she had settled comfortably in his lap he began: “‘Emily was a guinea pig who loved to travel. Generally she stayed home and looked after her brother Arthur. But every so often she grew tired of cooking and mending and washing and ironing; the day would seem too dark, and the house too small, and she would have a great longing to set out into the distance . . . .’”

  Looking down at the top of her head as he was reading, he felt an impulse to put his nose down and smell her hair. Born in a hurry she was. Born in one hell of a hurry, half an hour after her mother got to the hospital.

  LAURIE Carrington said, “What is the difference, what is the difference between a barber and a woman with several children?” Nobody answered, so she asked the question again.

  “I give up,” Iris said.

  “Do you know, Daddy?”

  “I give up too, we all give up.”

  “A barber . . . has razors to shave. And the woman has shavers to raise.” He looked at her over the top of his half-glasses, wondering what ancestor was responsible for that reddish-blond hair.

  “That’s a terribly funny one, Laurie,” he said. “That’s the best one yet,” and his eyes reverted to the editorial page. A nagging voice inside his head informed him that a good father would be conversing intelligently with his children at the breakfast table. But about what? No intelligent subject of conversation occurred to him, perhaps because it was Iris’s idea in the first place, not his.

  He said, “Cindy, would you like a bacon sandwich?”

  She thought, long enough for him to become immersed in the Times again, and then she said, “I would like a piece of bacon and a piece of toast. But not a bacon sandwich.”

  He dropped a slice of bread in the toaster and said, “Py-rozz-quozz-gill”—a magic word, from one of the Oz books. With a grinding noise the bread disappeared.

  “Stupid Cindy,” Laurie remarked, tossing her head. But Cindy wasn’t fooled. Laurie used to be the baby and now she wasn’t anymore. She was the oldest. And what she would have liked to be was the oldest and the baby. About lots of things she was very piggy. But she couldn’t whistle. Try though she might, whhih, whhih, whhih, she couldn’t. And Cindy could.

  The toast emerged from the toaster and Iris said, “Not at the breakfast table, Cindy.” The morning was difficult for her, clouded with amnesia, with the absence of energy, with the reluctance of her body to take on any action whatever. Straight lines curved unpleasantly, hard surfaces presented the look of softness. She saw George and the children and the dog lying at her feet under the table the way one sees rocks and trees and cottages at the seashore through the early-morning fog; just barely recognizable they were.

  “WHY is a church steeple—”

  “My gloves,” he said, standing in the front hall, with his coat on. “They’re in the drawer in the lowboy,” Iris said.

  “Why is a church steeple—”

  “Not those,” he said.

  “Why is a—”

  “Laurie, Daddy is talking. Look in the pocket of your chesterfield.”

  “I did.”

  “Yes, dear, why is a church steeple.”

  “Why is a church steeple like a maiden aunt?”

  “I give up.”

  “Do you know, Daddy?”

  “No. I’ve looked in every single one of my coats. They must be in my raincoat, because I can’t find that either.”

  “Look in your closet.”

  “I did look there.” But he went into the bedroom and looked again anyway. Then he looked all through the front-hall closet, including the mess on the top shelf.

  Iris passed through the hall with her arms full of clothes for the washing machine. “Did you find your raincoat?” she asked.

  “I must have left it somewhere,” he said. “But where?”

  He went back to the bedroom and looked in the engagement calendar on her desk, to see where they had been, and it appeared that they hadn’t been anywhere.

  “Where did we go when we had Albertha to babysit?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “We had her two nights.”

  “Did we? I thought we only went out one night last week.”

  She began to make the bed. Beds—for it was not one large bed, as it appeared to be in the daytime, but twin beds placed against each other with a king-sized cotton spread covering them both. When they were first married they slept in a three-quarter bed from his bachelor apartment. In time this became a double bed, hard as a rock because of the horsehair mattress. Then it also proved to be too small. For he developed twitches. While he was falling asleep his body beside her would suddenly flail out, shaking the bed and waking her completely. Six or seven times this would happen. After which he would descend at last into a deep sleep and she would be left with insomnia. So now there were twin beds, and even then her bed registered the seismic disturbances in his, though nothing like so much.

  “We went to that benefit. With Francis,” she said.

  “Oh . . . I think I did wear my raincoat that night. No, I wore the coat with the velvet collar.”

  “The cleaner’s?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t see how you could have left your raincoat somewhere,” she said. “I never see you in just a suit. Other men, yes, but never you.”

  He went into the hall and pulled open a drawer of the lowboy and took out a pair of grey gloves and drew them on. They had been his father’s and they were good gloves but too small for him. His fingers had burst open the seams at the end of the fingers. Iris had mended them, but they would not stay sewed, and so he went to Brooks and bought a new pair—the pair he couldn’t find.

  “The Howards’ dinner party?” he said.

  “That was the week before. Don’t worry about it,” Iris said. “Cindy, what have you been doing?”—meaning hair full of snarls, teeth unbrushed, at twenty-five minutes past eight.

  “It makes me feel queer not knowing where I’ve been,” George said, and went out into the foyer and pressed the elevator button. From that moment, he was some other man. Their pictures were under his nose all day but he had stopped seeing them. He did not even remember that he had a family, until five o’clock, when he pushed his chair back from his desk, reached for his hat and coat, and came home, cheerfully unrepentant. She forgave him now because she did not want to deal with any failure, including his, until she had had her second cup of coffee. The coffee sat on the living-room mantelpiece, growing cold, while she brushed and braided Cindy’s hair.

  “Stand still! I’m not hurting you.”

  “You are too.”

  The arm would not go into the sweater, the leggings proved to be on backwards, one mitten was missing. And Laurie wild because she was going to be late for school.

  The girls let the front door bang in spite of all that had been said on the subject, and in a moment the elevator doors opened to receive them. The quiet then was unbelievable. With the Times spread out on the coffee table in the living room, and holes in the Woman’s Page where she had cut out recipes, she waited for her soul, which left her during the night, to return and take its place in her body. When this happened she got up suddenly and went into the bedroom and started telephoning: Bloomingdale’s, Saks, the Maid-to-Order service, the children’s school, the electrician, the pediatrician, the upholsterer—half the population of New York City.

  OVER the side of the bed Cindy went, eyes open, wide awake. In her woolly pyjamas with feet in them. Even though it was dark outside—the middle of the night—it was only half dark in the bedroom. There was a blue night-light in the wall plug by the doll’s house, and a green night-light in the bathroom, beside the washbasin, and the door to the bathroom was partly open. The door to the hall was wide open and the hall light was on, but high up where it wasn’t much comfort, and she had to pass the closed door of Laurie’s room and the closed door to the front hall. Behind both these doors
the dark was very dark, unfriendly, ready to spring out and grab her, and she would much rather have been back in her bed except it was not safe there either, so she was going for help.

  When she got to the door at the end of the hall, she stood still, afraid to knock and afraid not to knock. Afraid to look behind her. Hoping the door would open by itself and it did. Her father—huge, in his pyjamas, with his hair sticking up and his face puffy with sleep. “Bad dream?” he asked.

  Behind him the room was all dark except for a little light from the hall. She could see the big windows—just barely—and the great big bed, and her mother asleep under a mound of covers. And if she ran past him and got into the bed she would be safe, but it was not allowed. Only when she was sick. She turned and went back down the hall, without speaking but knowing that he would pick up his bathrobe and follow her and she didn’t have to be brave anymore.

  “What’s Teddy doing on the floor?” he said, and pulled the covers up around her chin, and put his warm hand on her cheek. So nice to have him do this—to have him there, sitting on the edge of her bed.

  “Can you tell me what you were dreaming about?”

  “Tiger.”

  “Yes? Well that’s too bad. Were you very frightened?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it a big tiger?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know it was only a dream? It wasn’t a real tiger. There aren’t any tigers in New York City.”

  “In the zoo there are.”

  “Oh yes, but they’re in cages and can’t get out. Was this tiger out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it couldn’t have been a real tiger. Turn over and let me rub your back.”

  “If you rub my back I’ll go to sleep.”

  “Good idea.”

  “If I go to sleep I’ll dream about the tiger.”

  “I see. What do you want me to do?”

  “Get in bed with me.”

  What with Teddy and Raggedy Ann and Baby Dear, and books to look at in the morning, and the big pillow and the little pillow, things were a bit crowded. He put his hand over his eyes to shut out the hall light and said, “Go to sleep,” but she didn’t, even though she was beginning to feel drowsy. She was afraid he was going to leave her—if not right this minute then pretty soon. He would sit up in bed and say Are you all right now? and she would have to say Yes, because that was what he wanted her to say. Sometimes she said no and they stayed a little longer, but they always went away in the end.

  After a while, her eyes closed. After still another while, she felt the bed heave under her as he sat up. He got out of bed slowly and carefully and fixed the covers and put the little red chair by the bed so she wouldn’t fall out. She tried to say Dont go, but nothing happened. The floorboards creaked under the carpeting as he crossed the room. In the doorway he turned and looked at her, one last look, and she opened her eyes wide so he would know she wasn’t asleep, and he waved her a kiss, and that was the last of him, but it wasn’t the last of her. Pretty soon, even though there wasn’t a sound, she knew something was in the room. Hiding. It was either hiding behind the curtains or it was hiding in the toy closet or it was hiding behind the doll’s house or it was behind the bathroom door or it was under the bed. But wherever it was it was being absolutely still, waiting for her to close her eyes and go to sleep. So she kept them open, even though her eyelids got heavier and heavier. She made them stay open. And when they closed she opened them again right afterward. She kept opening them as long as she could, and once she cried out Laurie! very loud, but in her mind only. There was no sound in the room.

  The thing that was hiding didn’t make any sound either, which made her think maybe it wasn’t a tiger after all, because tigers have a terrible roar that they roar, but it couldn’t have been anything else, for it had stripes and a tail and terrible teeth and eyes that were looking at her through the back of the little red chair. And her heart was pounding and the tiger knew this, and the only friend she had in the world was Teddy, and Teddy couldn’t move, and neither could Raggy, and neither could she. But the tiger could move. He could do anything he wanted to except roar his terrible roar, because then the bedroom door would fly open and they would come running.

  She looked at the tiger through the back of the little red chair, and the tiger looked at her, and finally it thrashed its tail once or twice and then went and put its head in the air-conditioner.

  That isn’t possible . . . . But it was. More and more of his body disappeared into the air-conditioner, and finally there was only his tail, and then only the tip of his tail, and when that was gone so was she.

  THE young policeman who stood all night on the corner of East End Avenue and Gracie Square, eight stories below, was at the phone box, having a conversation with the sergeant on the desk. This did not prevent him from keeping his eyes on an emaciated junkie who stood peering through the window of the drugstore, past the ice-cream bin, the revolving display of paperbacks, the plastic toys, hair sprays, hand creams, cleansing lotions, etc., at the prescription counter. The door had a grating over it but the plate-glass window did not. One good kick would do it. It would also bring the policeman running.

  The policeman would have been happy to turn the junkie in, but he didn’t have anything on him. Vagrancy? But suppose he had a home? And suppose it brought the Civil Liberties Union running? The policeman turned his back for a minute and when he looked again the junkie was gone, vanished, nowhere.

  Though it was between three and four in the morning, people were walking their dogs in Carl Schurz Park. Amazing. Dreamlike. And the sign on the farther shore of the river that changed back and forth continually was enough to unhinge the mind: PEARLWICK HAMPERS became BATHROOM HAMPERS, which in turn became PEARLWICK HAMPERS, and sometimes for a fraction of a second BATHWICK HAMPERS.

  In the metal trash containers scattered here and there along the winding paths of the park were pieces of waxed paper that had been around food but nothing you could actually eat. The junkie didn’t go into the playground because the gates were locked and it had a high iron fence around it. He could have managed this easily by climbing a tree and dropping to the cement on the other side. Small boys did it all the time. And maybe in there he would have found something—a half-eaten Milky Way or Mounds bar that a nursemaid had taken from a child with a finicky appetite—but then he would have been locked in instead of out, and he knew all there was to know about that: Sing Sing, Rikers Island, Auburn, Dannemora. His name is James Jackson, and he is a figure out of a nightmare—unless you happen to know what happened to him, the steady rain of blows about his unprotected head ever since he was born, in which case it is human life that seems like a nightmare. The dog walkers, supposing—correctly—that he had a switchblade in his pocket and a certain amount of experience in using it, chose a path that detoured around him. The wind was out of the southeast and smelled of the sea, fifteen miles away on the other side of Long Beach and Far Rockaway. The Hell Gate section of the Triborough Bridge was a necklace of sickly-green incandescent pearls. When the policeman left his post and took a turn through the south end of the park, the junkie was sitting innocently on a bench on the river walk. He was keeping the river company.

  And when the policeman got back to his post a woman in a long red coat was going through the trash basket directly across the street from him. She was harmless. He saw her night after night. And in a minute she would cross over and tell him about the doctor at Bellevue who said she probably dreamed that somebody picked the lock of her door while she was out buying coffee and stole her mother’s gold thimble.

  The threads that bound the woman in the long red coat to a particular address, to the family she had been born into, her husband’s grave in the Brooklyn cemetery, and the children who never wrote except to ask for money, had broken, and she was now free to wander along the street, scavenging from trash containers. She did not mind if people saw her, or feel that what she was doing was in any way exceptional.
When she found something useful or valuable, she stuffed it in her dirty canvas bag, the richer by a pair of sandals with a broken strap or a perfectly clean copy of “Sartor Resartus.” What in the beginning was only an uncertainty, an uneasiness, a sense of the falsity of appearances, a suspicion that the completely friendly world she lived in was in fact secretly mocking and hostile, had proved to be true. Or rather, had become true—for it wasn’t always. And meanwhile, in her mind, she was perpetually composing a statement, for her own use and understanding, that would cover this situation.

  Three colored lights passed overhead, very high up and in a cluster, blinking. There were also lights strung through the park at intervals, and on East End Avenue, where taxicabs cruised up and down with their roof-lights on. Nobody wanted them. As if they had never in their life shot through a red light, the taxis stopped at Eighty-third Street, and again at Eighty-fourth, and went on when the light turned green. East End Avenue was as quiet as the grave. So were the side streets.

  With the first hint of morning, this beautiful quiet came to an end. Stopping and starting, making a noise like an electric toaster, a Department of Sanitation truck made its way down Eighty-fourth Street, murdering sleep. Crash. Tinkle. More grinding. Bump. Thump. Voices. A brief silence and then the whole thing started up again farther down the street. This was followed by other noises—a parked car being warmed up, a maniac in a sports car with no muffler. And then suddenly it was the policeman’s turn to be gone. A squad car drove by, with the car radio playing an old Bing Crosby song, and picked him up.

  Biding his time, the junkie managed to slip past the service entrance of one of the apartment buildings on East End Avenue without being seen. Around in back he saw an open window on the ground floor with no bars over it. On the other hand he didn’t know who or what he would find when he climbed through it, and he shouldn’t have waited till morning. He stood flattened against a brick wall while a handyman took in the empty garbage cans. The sound of retreating footsteps died away. The door to the service entrance was wide open. In a matter of seconds James Jackson was in and out again, wheeling a new ten-speed Peugeot. He straddled the bicycle as if he and not the overweight insurance broker in 7E had paid good money for it, and rode off down the street.