Pennsylvania Station
Page 25
His heart began to race. Curt was crossing the street. Curt was coming towards him.
Now here he was, standing before him. Here he was.
Curt.
He opened his arms and embraced Frederick, the way he’d done that first night he showed up on Frederick’s doorstep—what time was it? Eleven? Twelve? After midnight? He felt Curt’s body fit perfectly into the cradle of his own. They stood holding each other tight, under the blazing sun, on the plaza in front of Independence Hall, as spectators stood all around and pedestrians came from every direction. He was terrified to think what a pretty picture the two of them presented to the world at this moment. He let go.
“How are you?” Curt asked without smiling. Somehow he looked more youthful, if it were possible, than ever before, dressed so handsomely in his suit and tie. At the same time he looked more serious than ever. He’d gotten a crew cut. It was a different Curt. But the feel of his body, the strength of his touch, the forthrightness of his gaze, the low, burnished quality of his voice—none of that had changed. It was the same young man he’d fallen in love with three years ago.
“I’m here on business this weekend. We’re designing an apartment building on Park Avenue, and I wanted to see Society Hill because we’re aiming for an early-nineteenth-century look. Red brick, coach lamps—”
“I mean, how are you?” Curt asked again.
“Busy with work. I’ve been involved in the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The law was passed in April, I forget if you knew that.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, not before we lost the Brokaw Mansion. It was a free-standing house on Fifth Avenue and 79th Street, just a couple of blocks south of the Metropolitan Museum. We rallied, wrote letters, did everything we could, but there was no way to stop it.” Curt was listening intently but with a puzzled look on his face. “I forget why I started telling you this.”
“I asked you how you are.”
“Oh. Well—so, I’ve been very busy with that, and…” He was embarrassed by everything he’d said.
Curt, on the other hand, had no difficulty telling about his work for homosexual rights. He described his involvement with the Mattachine Society, how New York Mattachine joined forces with other chapters to form the East Coast Homophile Organizations, his constant fights with the conservatives in New York, “and this whole thing about dressing up.”
“You look like a prince.”
“I look ridiculous. But you just have to have faith. I’ve promised to be a good boy.”
Frederick wanted to know everything. And yet he wanted to know nothing. He didn’t want to be reminded how much Curt’s life carried on without him, how well Curt had survived him, how, for all his volatility, his unpredictability, his mercurial ways of acting and thinking and feeling, there was solid ground beneath him, solid rock at the center of him. For he had emerged. Blossomed. Frederick was a mere antechamber to but one room—one room in one wing—of the mansion of Curt’s life, that seemed clear. Frederick tried to hold steady his breath, as if he’d been sprinting and stopped abruptly. Damn Curt for making him feel this awful excitement.
“What do you think of the picket?”
“I think it’s probably best to work quietly on an individual basis.”
“What good will that do?”
“We’ve had this debate before. I don’t think you can really talk about ‘homosexual rights.’ That’s not to say homosexuals should be persecuted or further stigmatized, but—”
“I’m just as good as the next person. Why should I be treated like a second-class citizen?” Frederick held back. What was the use of further debate? “Homosexuality is not an illness, we are not sick. It’s the rest of society that defines us that way. How can I argue for my rights if I see myself as a sick, immoral person? And why should I have to wait for other people to decide to stop persecuting me? Why is it up to everyone else but me?” But still Frederick hesitated to respond, and Curt gave up. Instead he said, “You never answered my letter.”
Frederick looked in his eyes. In that moment, everything he’d ever felt for him cascaded through his brain, shot through his veins, and clutched his heart. “No…” he said.
Curt waited for him to continue.
Just because I’m getting married doesn’t mean—
Never again.
Frederick looked down to the ground, avoiding further eye contact.
Curt took a deep breath. “So, ‘if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles,’ is that it?” He too looked down and noticed Frederick’s bandaged fingers. Instinctively he reached out and gently took his hand. “What happened here?”
Embarrassed, Frederick withdrew—“Nothing, it’s nothing”—and put his hand in his pocket. “I burned myself on the stove.” Again he looked down.
“Okay,” Curt said. He was about to go when he remembered one last thing. “How is your mother?”
Frederick’s throat went dry. “She’s fine. She’s in a nursing home.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is she sick?”
“Just old.”
“How sad.”
“Not really. No, she’s…” He swallowed. “Content.”
“Well, I guess that’s all that matters. If she’s content.”
Their parting words came suddenly—take care of yourself, good luck, see you sometime. Curt opened his arms for one final embrace, but Frederick abruptly thrust out his hand for a handshake instead.
Watching Curt return to the picket line, he wondered if he should have been warmer. Maybe explained his position about the letter. But Curt obviously had gotten the message. What more was there to say? “If you want me again look for me under your boots-soles”—wait a minute. Where had he heard that before? “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love”… Whitman! Curt had just quoted Walt Whitman. It was near the end of “Song of Myself.” After many hundreds of lines, Whitman had said everything he’d come to say and at long last was taking leave of the reader (Curt now crossed Chestnut Street, heading toward the other protesters on the lawn), never to return, at least not in the flesh. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again…
So Curt had been reading Whitman on his own, to the point that he knew it by heart. Frederick remembered reading Whitman to him on one of their first nights together.
He turned and began walking away from Independence Hall. He didn’t know how to get to the Museum of Art from here. He only knew he had to leave.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
By the time Frederick’s train pulled into New York the next day, Penn Station was hell on earth. Jackhammers, bulldozers, welders, sparks flying, a wrecking ball smashing the north wall of the waiting room like an exploding bomb, hordes of office workers, shoppers, commuters, tourists, police sirens, ambulance horns, fire engines roaring down Seventh Avenue, traffic backed up through the intersection, pedestrians shouting obscenities, hot dog carts, soft pretzels, chestnuts for sale, secretaries rushing to get back to work, starting a new week, no time! I haven’t got time! dodging barricades, bewildered passengers pointing this way, no, that way, you have to go through there, down the steps, then up again where you’ll find the ticket booths. “Believe me, trains are still running!” a man shouted as he walked past, his dog pulling at the leash, growling, barking at another dog, a woman in high heels tripping across the avenue, cars barreling toward her, Bitch, get out of the way before you get hit! Did you see that? How rude! Are you all right? I’m fine, he was just about to run me over! She picked up her dog and checked his paws to make sure he wasn’t hurt. “Bastard!” she shouted and let the dog drop to the sidewalk as she tottered past the construction site, where workmen sat on cement blocks eating their lunch, whistling and shouting Come to Papa, hey baby, you and me, waddaya say?
“Bastard!”
Exiting the station, Frederick
felt a choking sensation. Ever since yesterday in Philadelphia, he’d been having difficulty breathing. The air in midtown only made it worse. Why on earth does anyone ever live in New York City? he wondered, just making it to the sidewalk across the street from Penn Station as the light changed, the sign flashing DON’T WALK, and the traffic springing forward. He felt faint. He pushed his way across the busy sidewalk towards the Statler Hotel and leaned his shoulder against the building. He pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead.
He turned to look back at what was left of Penn Station. One, two, three, he counted the remaining columns, eight, nine, ten…They’d already demolished the carriage entrances at 31st and 33rd Streets. The arcade was completely gone. The façade of Penn Station was now little more than a screen with nothing back of it. But Day and Night, their gowns black with grime, still stood over the entrance, propping up the shrouded clock that told No Time, their minions, proud stone eagles, still maintaining their lookouts. Clouds of smoke and dirt and the sound of engines howling rose above the station, and he could now see bright red steel spikes jutting up behind the shell of the waiting room, the soon-to-be Madison Square Garden, Coming Your Way, For Your Convenience, a gigantic, futuristic drum taking shape. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four… He remembered the protest three years ago—now there was hardly enough room on the sidewalk for a man to stop and catch his breath, much less a protest of five hundred. That was all in the past now. It was all too late, what’s done is done. Time flowed in one direction only, carrying everything and everyone with it, like lava flowing down the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, so much noise and confusion he couldn’t hear himself think. His head ached as if metal plates were screwed to the sides of his skull, an invisible hand cranking them tighter and tighter—when a bomb dropped—Curt would never come back to him again—exploded in a million pieces—they would never see each other again—spreading shock waves out from the center. Before his eyes a monumental wall of granite began to crack and then crumble. He looked up and saw pieces of stone falling from the sky, coming toward him. A fiery mushroom cloud rose over Penn Station, a blinding burst of light, then darkness. He turned to face the wall of the Statler Hotel, put out his hand against the building to steady himself so he wouldn’t fall, a red pagoda teetering on the edge of a cliff, Frederick it’s for you, his mother said, snow falling through the dining room window, his own mother didn’t recognize him anymore, burning rocks falling, his father was dead, and he would never forget where he stood that day the bomb fell, everyone frozen in mid-stride, buried in rubble, burned to death stepping from a taxi, bending over a jewelry counter, dancing salsa on a front stoop, playing tag, jumping rope, running through an open hydrant, feeding ducks in Central Park, sitting on a bench eating a sandwich, reading a newspaper, walking the dog, lovers kissing, caught in the revolving door of the Statler Hotel, kissing, embracing, he and Jon, right there in the middle of the concourse in Penn Station, so in love they didn’t care if everyone stopped and stared at the sight of two men embracing in public, holding each other tight.
Then he heard someone choking, an aching, hacking, coughing, choking sound, and it was the sound of his own throat, it was the sound of his own tears—what have I done—erupting from the open wound of Mount Penn, weeping, standing and steadying himself with one arm against the wall of the Statler Hotel, across from the ruins of Pennsylvania Station, On Its Way To You, Coming Soon, All-New, Ultra-Modern, For Your Convenience, weeping for the dawn of a new day he wished would never come, as first one, then another, then another person stopped and stared at this queer fellow standing alone there weeping, steadying himself against the building, his suitcase at his feet, his face buried in his hand.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PENNSYLVANIA STATION is a work of historical fiction. It dramatizes the intersection of the mid-twentieth-century historic preservation movement with the Civil Rights movement using mostly invented characters and situations as well as some actual events and a few cameos.
My sincerest thanks to publisher Steve Berman for his belief in the book and his patient editorial guidance. Thanks to Franco La Russa (aka Thion) for his inspired artwork on the cover and inside the book. Jill Dearman and the members of her writing workshop played a crucial role in getting the book off the ground. Without the camaraderie and intellectual support of Marcy Arlin, the book wouldn’t exist. For generous feedback on the manuscript, thanks to Margie McCarthy Ferro, Cris Gleicher, William Burgos, Gilbert Cole, Amy Pratt, and Janet Rosen. Thanks also to copyeditor and interior designer Alex Jeffers. John Dever shared with me his knowledge of the history and geography of Reading, Pennsylvania. Robert Grobstein and Simon Levine gave me invaluable insight into the lives of gay men before Stonewall. My depiction of the early years of the contemporary gay rights movement owes a lot to Martin Duberman’s book Stonewall, especially Duberman’s profile of activist Craig Rodwell. Anthony C. Wood, along with his indispensable book Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks, helped me understand the history of the historic preservation movement and the role that the demolition of the old Penn Station played in it. Laura Pedersen at the New York Preservation Archive Project gave me access to some rare, early-1960s documents. The idea for the novel occurred to me in the spring of 2004 as I was teaching a seminar at Columbia University on post-World War II lesbian and gay fiction; thanks to the wonderful students in that class for helping me more fully appreciate the power and pain of modern “protest” fiction. And thanks to the Trustees of Long Island University for granting me sabbaticals in 2009-10 and 2016-17 during which I was able to make sustained progress on the manuscript.
Above all I am grateful to my husband, Eduardo Leanez, for being such a reliable sounding board and faithful reader from the moment I started working on the book. I dedicate it to him with love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick E. Horrigan was born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania. He earned a BA from The Catholic University of America and a PhD from Columbia University. He is the author of the novel Portraits at an Exhibition (Lethe Press), winner of the 2016 Mary Lynn Kotz “Art in Literature” Award, given jointly by the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. His other works include the memoir Widescreen Dreams: Growing Up Gay at the Movies, the play Messages for Gary: A Drama in Voicemail, and (with Eduardo Leanez) the solo show You Are Confused! He has written artists’ catalogue essays for Thion’s Limi-TATE: Drawings of Life and Dreams (cueB Gallery, London) and Ernesto Pujol’s Loss of Faith (Galeria Ramis Barquet, New York). His essay “The Inner Life of Ordinary People” appears in Anthony Enns’ and Christopher R. Smit’s Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability. He and Mr. Leanez are the hosts of Actors with Accents, a recurring variety show in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Winner of Long Island University’s David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching, he is Associate Professor of English at LIU Brooklyn. He lives in Manhattan.
www.patrickehorrigan.com
Pennsylvania Station
Copyright © 2018 Patrick E. Horrigan. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in 2018 by Lethe Press, Inc. at Smashwords.com
www.lethepressbooks.com • lethepress@aol.com
ISBN: 978-1-59021-636-1 / 1-59021-636-9
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Interior design: Alex Jeffers.
Cover art/design and interior art: Franco La Russa (aka Thion).
Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with the Library of Congress.
nbsp; Patrick E Horrigan, Pennsylvania Station