New York

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “I think she had a good idea she was sick all along and she didn’t want to know about it.” When the doctor told Juan that his mother’s ankle would be okay in a month, but that she had a bad heart, Juan’s path had been clear.

  There were scholarships available for Stuyvesant pupils to go to the Ivy League schools, but it was obvious that wouldn’t work. The City College up at West 137th Street, however, was free and the education was good. He could attend it from home, and look after his mother as well. For the next years, he’d studied at City College by day and worked nights and vacations to help support her. When Maria hadn’t even been able to do the few light jobs she’d still retained, he’d taken time off from college so that he could work non-stop and put some extra savings by. It had been tough, but they’d managed.

  Then, in his final year at City College, she had died. He knew very well that she’d wanted to go; she was in pain and had little energy—but she also wanted him to be free.

  Until his mother’s sickness, Juan had never paid much attention to his surroundings. He knew the rooms they lived in needed painting, and that the light in the hallway didn’t work, and that the landlord said he’d fix things and never did. But his mother had always insisted that the household was her affair, and he should concentrate on his studies. Sometimes he’d dreamed of having a fine house one day—he didn’t know where—and of marrying and having a big family, and looking after his mother. This was a dream that his hard work at school might one day realize. The present, in his mind, was only a temporary state.

  But as Maria grew weaker, and he had to take charge, the harsh realities of the present had become very real indeed. There was the rent to be paid, and food to be bought. Some weeks, there wasn’t enough money, and on more than one occasion, Juan had to ask the owner of the nearby corner store to let him have food on credit. The man was friendly with Maria, and he was kind. When Juan came in one afternoon with a few dollars he owed him, the man just said, “That’s okay, kid. Pay me back when you get rich.”

  More difficult were his dealings with the landlord. Mr. Bonati was a small, bald, middle-aged man who’d owned the building for a long time, and who collected the rents himself. When Juan had to pay him late, he was understanding. “I know your mother a long time, now,” he said. “She gives me no trouble.” But when Juan tackled him about the dangerous broken stair, or the blocked drain, or any of the other things that made daily life a trial, Bonati always gave him some excuse, and did nothing. Finally, seeing the young man’s exasperation, Bonati had taken Juan by the arm.

  “Listen, I can see you’re a smart kid. You’re polite, you’re going to college. Think about it—do you know any other kids on this block going to college? Most of them never finished high school. So listen to what I’m telling you. Your mother pays me a low rent. You know why? Because this building is rent-controlled. That’s why I can’t make any money out of it either. It’s why I can’t afford to do many repairs. But this is a good building, by comparison. Some of the buildings around here are falling apart. You know that.” Mr. Bonati waved his hand toward the north-west. “Do you remember that building a few blocks away which burned down eighteen months ago?” That had been a huge fire, and Juan remembered it well. “The owner of that place couldn’t make a thing out of it. So he stripped out most of the wiring and after the building burned down, he collected the insurance. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “You mean he burned it down?” Juan had heard a rumor.

  “I didn’t say that. Okay?” Bonati gave him a quick, hard look. “It’s like that all over El Barrio, all over Harlem. There used to be decent neighborhoods up here. Germans, Italians, Irish. But now it’s all changed. The place is falling apart, and nobody cares. The kids up here live in terrible housing, they don’t have jobs or education. They haven’t a hope, and they know it. It’s the same in Chicago and other big cities. I’m telling you, the whole of Harlem is a ticking time bomb.”

  A few days later, some men came to fix the drain. But Bonati never did anything else. So Juan made inquiries about getting his mother a better place to live in one of the housing projects, but got nowhere.

  “Don’t you know, kid?” the man at the corner store said. “The housing projects favor whites and blacks, but Puerto Ricans, they don’t want to know about. In some areas, they just want to push the Puerto Ricans out.”

  He went to some of the white welfare organizations, and found the people there treated him with ill-concealed contempt. He wasn’t surprised, but he nonetheless felt rage, not just for himself and his mother, but that Puerto Ricans in general should be treated like this. And now he began to understand that his mother’s vision was not only that he, her son, should escape from poverty and make a good life for himself in the world, but that he should accomplish something larger than that. When she spoke of Baroso, she didn’t just mean a man of respect, but one who had done something big and important to help his people. And he loved her for this greater, nobler ambition all the more.

  After she died, Juan, who had grown into a slim and decidedly good-looking young man, returned to college. He graduated with honors, and wished that his mother could have been there to see it. And from that day, he had set out on the long and arduous path that destiny, it seemed, had chosen for him.

  Gorham Master found the tiny restaurant Juan had chosen without difficulty. He arrived there first, and sat down at a little table for four, taking a seat with his back to the wall. A good-looking redhead arrived just moments after him, and was put at the next table. She also sat against the wall, as she waited for her date.

  Apart from the fact that Gorham always enjoyed seeing Juan, he was curious to see the new girlfriend his friend was bringing. Five minutes later, they arrived.

  Juan was looking well. He’d grown a pencil-thin mustache since they’d last met. It gave his clever, handsome face a somewhat military look. He greeted Gorham with a big grin, and introduced his girlfriend.

  Janet Lorayn, Gorham noted with admiration, was drop-dead gorgeous. She looked, and moved, like a younger version of Tina Turner. Giving Gorham a warm smile, she sat down opposite him, with Juan on her left. The tables were so small and close together that Juan was almost looking into the face of the redhead at the next table.

  They exchanged a few words of greeting. Gorham complimented Juan on his mustache, and Juan said that Janet thought it made him look like a pirate. “She says she likes pirates,” he added.

  The waitress came and they ordered a bottle of white wine. Gorham glanced outside; the sky was darkening as it began to fill with clouds. After they had poured their wine and the waitress had told them the two choices, Janet turned her attention on Gorham.

  “So you’re a banker?” she said.

  “That’s right. And you?”

  “I work in a literary agency at the moment. It’s interesting.”

  “She just sold the serial rights of a new novel today,” Juan informed him proudly.

  “Congratulations—we’ll drink to that. My father wrote a novel once.”

  “I heard,” said Janet. “Verrazano Narrows. That was a big deal.”

  Juan had observed the redhead at the next table. She couldn’t fail to hear their conversation, but was politely ignoring them, and glancing toward the door from time to time. At the mention of the famous book, however, she did steal a quick glance toward Gorham, out of curiosity.

  “Janet’s wondering whether to try to get into the television business, however,” said Juan. “She has a friend who works in production in NBC.”

  It was one of the things Gorham loved about the city that, just as in his father’s young days when the great men of letters sat at the Algonquin Round Table, the big publishing houses were still here, and the mighty New York Times, and leading magazines, from Time to the New Yorker. The great television networks had joined them too—all gathered within walking distance of each other in Manhattan’s Midtown. But it seemed Janet didn’t want to talk about
her future in television just now.

  “What I want to know,” she said, “is how you two met.”

  “At Columbia Business School,” Gorham told her. “That was the great thing about the MBA course. You had all kinds of people, from conventional banking types like me to really unusual guys like Juan. Plenty of the people I knew in the MBA program went into not-for-profit organizations, careers in charity, hospital administration, you name it.”

  Gorham had been very impressed with Juan and so had the admissions office at Columbia. By that time, Juan had already worked for Father Gigante, the priest and community leader who was helping the poor up in the South Bronx, and he’d spent another year in the South Bronx with the Multi-Service Center in Hunts Point. Before trying to use his experience in El Barrio, he’d been told he ought to try for an MBA program, to which he’d not only been accepted, but got grants to pay for everything.

  “I’m sure Columbia reckoned that, with his background, Juan could become a leader in New York,” Gorham said. Then he grinned. “Of course, I have even higher ambitions for him.”

  “Tell me,” said Janet.

  “First he’ll revitalize El Barrio, and he’ll have to get into politics to do that. Then he’ll become mayor of New York—another La Guardia. Then he’ll run for president. By that time I’ll be a big-time banker and I’ll raise funds for him, and then when he’s president, Juan will reward me by sending me somewhere really nice as an ambassador.”

  “Sounds great,” said Janet, with a laugh. “Where do you plan to go?”

  “Maybe London, or Paris. I will accept either.”

  “London,” said Juan firmly. He turned to Janet. “His French is terrible.”

  “I’m impressed, Gorham,” said Janet. “You have your whole life worked out.”

  “It all depends on Juan, though.”

  “Did Juan ever take you round Harlem?”

  “I took him round El Barrio several times,” Juan said. “He asked me to. And it’s not all bad in El Barrio—he got to like our music, and our food, didn’t you, Gorham?”

  “I did.”

  “Of course,” Juan continued, with a twinkle in his eye, “if you want to see something really impressive, you have to see Gorham’s apartment. He owns this big place, you know, on Park Avenue.”

  But though he said this to Janet, it was the redhead at the next table that he was watching out of the corner of his eye. And sure enough, as he had planned, she turned to look at Gorham again.

  Outside, there was a rumble of thunder. Rain started to fall. Juan glanced at the door. There was a young couple there, hoping to get in, but all the tables were now occupied. He saw his chance, and leaned across to the redhead.

  “Excuse me, but are you waiting for someone?”

  “Yes,” said the redhead tersely. And then, so as not to seem rude, she added: “My brother.”

  “Do you think he’ll show up?”

  Juan had such a charming way of being intrusive, that people usually forgave him.

  “Maybe.” She glanced at her watch. “Maybe not.”

  “I was just thinking,” said Juan politely, “that if you came to our table, those poor people at the door could get in out of the rain.”

  The redhead stared at him coldly for a moment, glanced at the couple at the door, and then relented.

  “And if my brother turns up?”

  “I think,” Juan smiled, “we could fit him on the end of our table.”

  The redhead shook her head with a wry amusement. “Okay,” she conceded, “I’m Maggie O’Donnell.” They introduced themselves. “I guess I already know what you all do, but I’m a lawyer.”

  The meal passed very pleasantly. They learned that Maggie worked for Branch & Cabell, and Gorham said: “That means you’re going back to work after this, am I right?” And Maggie admitted that she was.

  It wasn’t long before Gorham decided that this B & C lawyer was rather attractive, and he tried to find out more about her. He managed to discover that she’d been to a meeting of the Historical Landmarks Commission at lunchtime, and that she was passionate about protecting the city’s classic architecture, like Grand Central, from the relentless advance of the glass-box skyscrapers. His father would have approved of that—a point in her favor. But though Maggie was perfectly friendly, Gorham noticed that she had the lawyer’s trick of evading questions she didn’t want to answer.

  Gorham wanted to know more about what Juan had been doing recently, so Juan told them how he’d been working with nearby Mount Sinai Hospital to provide health care in El Barrio, and how he was trying to improve the terrible housing there. He’d been working with some of the radical Puerto Rican activists in El Barrio as well, getting them to back these projects too.

  Gorham was impressed. “That’s good work, Juan,” he said. “The link with Mount Sinai is brilliant.” Maggie also listened intently, but the young lawyer seemed puzzled.

  “How do you work with the radicals?” she asked. “From what I hear, some of these people are pretty dangerous.”

  Juan sighed. He knew what was troubling her. Back at the end of the sixties some of the younger Puerto Ricans had formed a group, called themselves the Young Lords, and demanded better conditions in El Barrio. For a while they’d made common cause with the Black Panthers of Chicago, for which they’d been reviled in the press. It was hardly surprising that a nice, white, middle-class lawyer like Maggie would find such people frightening.

  “You have to understand, Maggie,” he said, “that I was lucky. I got an education, and I was out of the gangs. Otherwise I might easily have been in prison by now, like my cousin Juan. Illegal activities are natural in some communities.” Maggie frowned—the lawyer in her didn’t like that—but he pressed on. “Look, the problems of Harlem and the South Bronx are the same as those of other American cities. New York, Chicago, wherever: it’s the same thing. You have poor populations who’ve suffered years of massive neglect, who have few if any chances of getting out of the mean streets where they live, and who believe, often rightly, that no one cares about them. When Puerto Ricans in El Barrio called themselves the Young Lords and organized free breakfasts and health clinics, that wasn’t such a bad idea. They were demanding help for their people. So, in their way, were the Black Panthers in Chicago. When Puerto Ricans talked about self-determination, that wasn’t so unreasonable either. Nobody else seemed to care about them.

  “Some of them, in their rage, advocated violent demonstrations. I’m against that. And it’s perfectly true there was an accompanying political philosophy. They claimed to be socialists or even communists—whatever that actually meant. Hoover and his FBI made a big deal of the communist thing. I’m certainly not a socialist, but I find their feelings understandable. When a society turns its back on one community, then people in that community may quite reasonably believe that life might be better under another system—it’s human nature. So I try to alleviate the causes of that mistaken belief. Some people have worked hard to discredit the Young Lords and the Black Panthers, and they have largely succeeded, but the underlying problems that caused these groups to protest remain unsolved. If Harlem is still seething, it’s for a reason, I promise you.”

  Juan realized he’d become a little heated, but he couldn’t help it. He watched the redhead to see her reaction. He’d thought she might make a nice date for Gorham, but if she reacted badly to what he’d said, maybe he’d made the wrong choice.

  “Interesting,” she said.

  Gorham laughed. “Typical lawyer,” he said.

  The conversation turned to people’s childhoods after that. Janet had been brought up in Queens. “Black Catholic. My mom was very strict.” Gorham described visits to his grandmother. Once or twice the conversation was interrupted by great crashes of thunder and lightning as the storm moved from south to north up Manhattan. Gorham learned that Maggie’s grandfather had been brought up in a big house on lower Fifth Avenue. “Old Sean O’Donnell had money. He made it in
the last century.” She smiled. “We don’t have it now.”

  “Lost in the crash and the Depression?” Gorham asked.

  “Maybe some of it was. But I think we were just a big Irish family. Lots of children, for another three generations. It soon gets watered down. My father’s worked all his life, and he still has a mortgage. What can I say?”

  Once or twice toward the end of the meal, Maggie had discreetly glanced at her watch, obviously thinking about getting back to work. But the rain was falling so heavily that the chances of finding a taxi didn’t look good. As they were having dessert, however, the storm withdrew to the north. The thunder could still be heard rolling up the Hudson, but the rain had slackened off. It was nearly nine thirty.

  “Well,” said Maggie, “this has been really nice, but I’ll have to be getting back to work soon.” A huge flash of lightning in the distance seemed to confirm the urgency of her mission.

  “Won’t you have coffee first?” said Gorham. “It’ll help you work.”

  “Good idea,” said Maggie.

  And then all the lights went out.

  It wasn’t just in the little restaurant. The entire area abruptly went dark. There was a silence, followed by laughter. There were candles in little glass jars lighting the tables; after a few moments, the owner appeared from the kitchen and started lighting more. The coffee was already made, she told them, so they could have that, anyway.

  “I expect it’ll be over in a little while,” said Gorham. “Con Ed has massive backup capacity.”

  “Or maybe it’ll be like ’65 again,” said Juan. “A population explosion.” It was a statistical fact that, nine months after the last big blackout, back in 1965, there had been a short, sharp increase in the local birth rate. Gorham turned to Maggie.

  “I’m afraid you may have difficulty getting to work now.”

  “I’ll find a taxi. It’s not raining any more.”

  “But there’s no light.”

  “Maybe the office has a backup generator.”

  “And if not?”