Pennsylvania Station

by Patrick E Horrigan

  “Honey, aren’t you over-dramatizing just a bit?” Seymour asked, eliciting snickers from the other men standing by the bar. Frederick felt a tug at his sleeve. It was Curt.

  “I’ve just been talking with Alan Emerson.” Keep telling everyone he’s a distant cousin, Frederick reminded himself, and felt he was standing an inch too close, as if they were a couple, like Deborah and Seymour. He was starting to get his stories mixed up. Hadn’t he told someone a few minutes ago Curt was the friend of a friend, a promising architecture student? Someone was bound to catch him in his lies if they hadn’t already.

  “Do you think he’s a sister?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Alan. Do you think—”

  “I think you should stick to superficial topics like the weather.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  “No, but can’t you just be a wallflower for once?”

  “Never!” he said with an air of sunny defiance and went off in search of more hors d’oeuvres.

  “…and then finish the Landmarks bill,” Seymour was saying, “and put it under the Mayor’s nose, and make sure he gets it passed. That’ll take more than black arm bands and street theatre.”

  But Deborah was preoccupied with the eagle. “I almost think the entire ceremony was directed against us. Against AGBANY. I’m telling you, they were gloating over it, like it was King Kong brought back from Africa.”

  “Yeah, but remember what King Kong did when he finally woke from his stupor. He ran amok, terrorizing the citizens of New York!”

  “Uh huh, and then dead on the sidewalk. The End.”

  “Look,” Seymour said, “we knew how unlikely it would be to save Penn Station without the force of law, especially with a project the size of a new Madison Square Garden in the offing, with all the money the city stands to make from it. At this point the civic groups are heavily invested in working with Wagner. What they really want is a landmarks law, so they’re not willing to rock the boat. If that means sacrificing Penn Station to get a place at the decision-making table, they’re willing to do it.”

  “You just reduce the whole thing to cold-hearted politics.”

  “Sweetheart, that’s exactly what this is. Everything is politics. And I don’t care if you’re talking about the Negroes or old buildings.” Deborah seemed unconvinced. “We have to move beyond guerilla warfare. Singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ on a picket line is loads of fun, but now we’re talking about government. The responsibilities of government. That’s politics.”

  “God, who was that bore you were talking to at the party?” Curt asked late that night as they were settling into bed.

  “You mean Seymour? He works at Emerson, Root. I’ve known him since Columbia. He’s married to Deborah.”

  “Oh, that was Deborah! She’s nice. I was talking with her for a while.”

  “You really made the rounds, didn’t you?”

  “I like parties. And I can talk to almost anyone.”

  “You seemed to be talking to Al Emerson for a long time.”

  “Which one was he?”

  “The young intern with the black hair.”

  “Oh, he was dishy. I liked him. He’s the one I asked you about, and you got mad at me. I couldn’t tell if he’s a sister. Architects are a weird bunch. I met this one guy, I think he works in your firm, and we were talking about the Mattachine Society, because he’d been to a meeting in San Fr—”

  “You were talking about the Mattachine Society at the book party?”

  “Yeah, I—”

  “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want you to mix that up with my professional life?”

  “This isn’t just about your professional life.”

  “These are my colleagues. Some of them I see every single day.” A thought crossed his mind. “How were you introducing yourself to people?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Tell me how you were introducing yourself. What did we agree?”

  “We didn’t agree to anything. You told me what you wanted me to do and say, like I’m supposed to obey you because you’re older and more established or something.”

  “We have talked about this over and over, and you still don’t understand, do you?”

  “It’s pathetic the way you pretend to be someone you’re not. I’m not saying you have to announce to everybody you’re homosexual, and I’m not saying you have to introduce me as your lover, and for your information I told people I’m your friend, okay? ‘Friend.’ Can you live with that?”

  “‘Friend’ isn’t good enough. You know some people interpret ‘friend’ as something more than a friend. We said you’re a distant cousin, staying with me until—”

  “I can’t read people’s minds and I’m not about to start trying. It’s legitimate to talk about the Mattachine Society just as it would be if I were a member of the fucking ASPCA. It’s not gonna make their heads explode.”

  “You’re making my head explode!”

  “Well, good, go ahead and explode. I’m fucking sick of this!”

  Curt jumped out of bed and went to his closet.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?”

  Frederick watched him slip on a pair of dungarees and a sweater, then sit on the floor to put on socks and sneakers. Next be began stuffing some extra clothes into a duffel bag.

  “Where are you going?”

  “What do you care?”

  “You always walk out when there’s any kind of conflict.”

  “You try to control every word I say, every move I make. You’re not my father!” With that, Curt exited the bedroom.

  Frederick decided to let him go this time without further argument. He heard him rustling hangers in the hall closet. He heard the front door bang.

  Damn Curt and his outbursts! He reached for a sleeping pill on his night table. Something had to be done. Things couldn’t go on like this. Already he suspected Deborah knew the score between them (“How did you and your friend meet?” she asked at the book party—no one asks that unless they’re prying into the relationship itself—unless they assume there’s a “relationship” to begin with). She was urging him to join a network of preservation activists who, at a moment’s notice, could be called upon to run to the rescue of buildings under siege, at least until—if, when, it wasn’t clear—a landmarks law was passed. Never! He was an architect, not an anarchist. He’d rather design his country house than run all over town making a spectacle of himself. He could feel the pill starting to take effect. He pictured a bunker. A pyramid, half-submerged underground. He could hear the rain outside, the pyramid sinking deeper into the ground, a building that, in the event of an air raid or a Soviet attack, could, with the flick of a switch (Curt left the light on in the hallway, but he was too tired to get up and turn it off) sink into the earth out of sight, all its treasures safe from bombs falling and the rain falling, and he slept heavily, and the next morning woke with a hangover—what with the pill and the wine at the party and—a sick feeling welled up in his gut.

  Curt was gone. The bed was empty. It was a grim, gray late-October morning. He might never come back this time. He’d said he was sick to death, or words to that effect. He opened the drapes and saw the spire of Grace Church. A landmark. Hundreds of years would go by and it would still stand. Or would it?

  He opened his front door and saw a picture of one of the Penn Station eagles cut loose from the façade, harnessed and lowered to the ground with a trio of men in hard hats looking up as it made its descent. “Beginning of the end of a landmark” the caption read. “Marked the start of transformation of Pennsylvania Station yesterday morning.” He stood in the kitchen, his bathrobe falling open, exposing his nudity, but no one could see, he was on such a high floor, and if someone from a neighboring building were perverted enough to spy through binoculars, what did he care? Curt was gone this morning and, to tell the truth, it was hard to care about much of anyt
hing at all.

  At 9 A.M. electric jackhammers tore at the granite slabs of the side of the terminal near the 33d Street entrance, crushing the hopes of a band of architects who had rallied to save what the Municipal Art Society called “one of the great monuments of classical America.”

  There was mention of the protesters with armbands and signs reading “Shame,” along with the inevitable other side of the story.

  Morris Lipsett, president of the concern that is preparing the site for the new center, said: “If anybody seriously considered it art, they would have put up some money to save it. You always have half a dozen societies around trying to preserve everything.”

  Frederick threw the paper down on the table in disgust. “Trying to preserve everything.” It was an insult, as if their opposition to the demolition of a masterpiece of American architecture was nothing more than a naïve wish that nothing change. “What we were trying to do…” he started to say out loud, but the sound of his own voice was too real, too frightening—he much preferred to stay inside his head and not have to confront the real world in any of its forms, even the reality of his own speaking voice. At least not yet, not now, at six o’clock in the morning, before his first cup of coffee, and Curt was gone, and when would he come back?

  Frederick pushed through the day and night, and the next morning dawned much as the one before. He opened his front door, picked up the Times, made himself a cup of coffee, sat at the table and glanced over the front page, then turned to the editorials, as was his custom (how quickly he reverted to custom with Curt gone—but he would gladly forego his daily habits to have him back, to wake up next to him).

  Farewell to Penn Station

  Until the first blow fell no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance.

  He could barely stand to read it. The description of the station’s rich grandeur—its Doric columns, vaulted concourse, opulent detail, and precious materials—was painful. And to think New York, with all its resources and tens of thousands of artists and intellectuals—to think New York City couldn’t save it… The final indictment is of the values of our society. Hear, hear! Frederick thought as he lit a cigarette. He’d read recently that a group of doctors warned cigarette smoking could be dangerous to one’s health. He used to think such warnings foolish, a bunch of eggheads whistling in the wind, but what was the difference between a group of architects saying, This old building has value, though most people couldn’t care less, and a group of doctors saying, Our research shows what you always thought was good may in fact not be good after all, and now whom do you believe, and what do you do? Who has the answer? Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. He began to feel sick. He shouldn’t smoke on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tin-horn culture. In Europe, time weathers and dignifies what’s old and makes it venerable. The cathedrals that survived the bombing, even in their ruined condition, have a nobility no new building, no intact building, could approach. But here in the United States…

  He rushed to the living room and pulled the sketchbook from his briefcase. He had an idea for his country house. Take an existing building in ruins—a barn or even just the foundations of a building. He thought of the shell of the old Summit Hotel at the top of Mount Penn in Reading. Build on top of it. Incorporate the remnants of the old into the structure of the new. It had been the basis for his inspiration to re-use the portico from the old Rheinlander mansion on the façade of Two Fifth Avenue. Someone had proposed doing something like this with Penn Station, but then someone else objected, saying Penn Station is total architecture, you can’t just save one piece of it. So now we’ll have nothing, he thought, and wondered if Curt would call him at the office today. Or perhaps when he got home tonight he might find Curt sitting on the sofa, or asleep in bed, all wrongs forgiven, all fights put to rest, a new day dawning.

  In any case, all of his things were here. He’d have to come home some time. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed. “I’m getting married,” Jon had said. “I can’t talk to you now,” Frederick replied and still hadn’t spoken to him to this day. It was all he could do to fight back tears, with his entire family sitting there watching, listening (he felt tears coming on and fought them back). And where had Jon gone? What had become of him? Had his marriage turned out well? Did he have children? Or did he come to his senses and admit who he is? And if so, had he found another man, and was he, even now, living somewhere in New York City? Some days he was sure he saw him, on the subway, passing on the street, and he would hurry on up ahead to get a better look, but discreetly so as not to disturb whomever it might be. And if it were Jon and he had the chance to approach him, speak to him, would he do it? What would he say?

  I miss you. I need you. I have never stopped loving you.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The alcohol flowed more freely than usual at Bailey family gatherings. Frederick looked dazed as Curt and his mother sat among the aunts at the dining table. The women had staked out their usual positions. Not even the death of their beloved baby brother could change certain habits. What he couldn’t get over was that Clare and Curt had taken a liking to each other.

  “What did she say?” she repeatedly asked him as the aunts told stories about Fritz dating back to the ’90s.

  “Something about Brown’s Cove?”

  “Brown’s Cove, Clare,” Hilda shouted, even though Clare was sitting four feet away from her. “Where Papa used to take us in the summer.”

  “There was no running water!”

  “Just the bucket.”

  “And the stream!”

  The women erupted in squalls of laughter. Death seemed to have opened some hitherto untapped reservoir of hilarity.

  How he and Curt had come to be here together was still a matter of astonishment to Frederick. It all began with their big fight last October, the night of the book party. Curt left in a huff and had all but decided (he later confessed) to end it with Frederick. But he soon grew uneasy. Why, he couldn’t exactly say. It became clear a month later, the day of Kennedy’s assassination. He was alone at Collin’s apartment watching TV. He’d called in sick to the agency. It was a Friday. Around 1:30 in the afternoon there was an emergency news bulletin: the president had been shot. For the next half hour he watched in disbelief as the reports trickled in. At 2:00 PM Kennedy was pronounced dead. Suddenly nothing was secure, nothing was safe. If the president could be shot and killed, anything could happen. Life seemed to hang by a thread. By 3:30, Johnson was sworn in as president. It never even occurred to him to contact Collin. He called Frederick at the office, but the secretary said everyone had already gone home. In a panic, he went directly to Frederick’s apartment. Frederick took him in, no questions asked. They hugged and cried and made love, and he ended up staying for the next ten days. Frederick said, Will you come home for good? The first weekend in December Curt moved back in.

  “What are they laughing at?”

  “I don’t know exactly, Mrs. Bailey,” he said in a deferential tone Frederick had never quite heard before, “but they’re talking about some place they vacationed when they were children, and how they teased your husband.”

  “Was I there?”

  “Clare, honey, we’re talking about Fritz when he was a boy, before he met you, long before you were married.”

  Then last week he got the call from Marge. It’s about Papa, she said. He was driving out on Rt. 222. In the rain. An aneurysm. (Everyone thought Clare would go first.) He knew instantly he couldn’t face his father’s coffin, or his family, alone.

  He sat down on the other side of his mother.

  “Here’s my Fritz.”

  “Mama, it’s me, Freddy.”

  “I love you, honey. Both you boys.” She pulled
Curt’s chin to hers and kissed him and did the same to Frederick. Curt beamed a wide-eyed smile.

  Without giving it a second thought, Frederick asked Curt to accompany him to the funeral, and Curt (quoting Bob Dylan) said almost laughingly, “‘Don’t criticize what you can’t understand!’ Sure, I’ll go with you. Sure.”

  And so here he was.

  “You want a drink?” he asked Frederick, getting up from the table.

  “I’d like another glass of wine,” Clare said.

  The story was, he was the son of Frederick’s friend Sandy, new in town, no place to stay, living with him until he got on his feet. Every time Frederick introduced Curt to a member of the family, there was a split-second of eye contact in which, it seemed, the knowledge was acknowledged. Oh, nice to meet you, thank you for being here, yes it was a shock, and so on. Otherwise no one said a word about it.

  Marge appeared suddenly from the kitchen, reached for Clare’s glass, and reprimanded Curt. “Don’t keep offering her wine, she’s had enough.”

  “He wasn’t offering her wine,” Frederick whispered so as not to embarrass Clare. “He was asking me if I wanted a drink. Marge,” he said, getting up from the table and putting his arm around her, trying to escort her out of the dining room, “for once you don’t have to be the hostess. Jean and Sally are taking care of everything. We just buried our father. Why don’t you calm down and—”

  “I know we just buried our father, thank you!” She fended off his touch with an aggressive shrug and walked into the crowded parlor.