Another Eden (6 page)

Sara resisted for a few seconds, saying, "Tsk," and "Honestly, Michael," but his laughter was too contagious to withstand. Alex folded his arms, chuckling in sympathy, when she collapsed along the top of the sofa and gave in to it, all care for formality and decorum cast aside. The elegant, finishing school posture disappeared; her puffy-sleeved suit jacket fell open and her lush breasts, pressing against the couch, strained against the sheer, cream-colored blouse she wore. Her pale, aristocratic face turned pink, and a long golden strand of hair escaped her perfect coiffure. The source of Alex's enjoyment shifted. His smile froze. He stared.

Mother and son finally pulled themselves together. Sara apologized half-heartedly, wiping her eyes. "If you've finished your tea," she told Michael, "it's time to tell Mr. McKie good-bye and run upstairs. Yes, darling, don't be difficult. Mrs. Drum is waiting; she's probably run your bath and it will be getting cold."

After a commendably brief period of whining, Michael stuck his small hand out at Alex and said, "Good-bye, sir. Thank you for drawing the house, it's really smashing."

"I'm glad you like it." Afterward he would wonder what came over him, but he heard himself say, "Do you know what a skyscraper is?"

"A big tall building. Dad showed me one once next to his office."

"Would you like to see the first one ever built in New York City?"

The beautiful gray-blue eyes widened in excitement. "Oh, yes, could I?"

"I'll show it to you. And your mother," he added casually.

"How nice of Mr. McKie. Say thank you," Sara urged.

"Thank you. When?"

"Really, darting—"

"How about Tuesday?"

"I have to go to school."

"Afterward, I meant." In truth, he'd forgotten all about school.

"Can we, Mum?" She looked dubious, and Michael tugged on her wrist to persuade her. "Can we? Why can't we? Please?"

"Well…" She didn't work at the settlement house on Tuesdays.

"We could have tea afterward at Dean's," Alex mentioned innocently. "Oh, Dean's!" cried Michael, jumping up and down. "Dean's! Dean's!"

Sara knew she was outnumbered. "It's very kind of you, Mr. McKie. We accept." She interrupted Michael's triumphant crowing by sending him upstairs again, firmly this time. He scampered out, tossing "See you Tuesday!" over his shoulder as he went.

"That really was very nice of you," Sara repeated, getting up and going to sit in a chair, "but you needn't have done it. You must be very busy, especially on a weekday."

"I am; that's
why
I did it." They smiled at each other. "Michael's very special, isn't he?" And he wasn't even trying to flatter her, he realized; it was simply a statement of fact.

"Yes, he is. But of course, I can hardly be objective about that."

"Did he…" He hesitated to bring it up because the subject embarrassed him. But he needed to know the answer. "Did he like his father's birthday present?"

She sent him a long, level look. "Ben changed his mind," she said kindly. "He gave him a bicycle."

He had the feeling he'd just been forgiven. "Did he? Well, that's—good, I'm glad. You were worried, as I recall, and I was thinking afterward that you were probably right—seven's too young for a boy to have a rifle. So. I'm glad." He closed his mouth and told himself to shut up.

Her sweet, knowing smile unnerved him.

The maid came in then and took away the tea things. Sara said, "I must apologize again for my husband, Mr. McKie," as she watched him roll up his drawings and slide them expertly back into the tube. "I can't imagine what's kept him. It was very thoughtless of him to ask you to come here—"

"Not at all."

"—on a Sunday, away from your office, and then not even to—"

"Don't give it a thought," he interrupted magnanimously, thinking he couldn't have arranged the afternoon better if he'd tried. "I'll just leave these here, if I may, and Ben can take a look at them when he gets a chance."

"Yes, of course." She stood up when he did, wishing he didn't have to go quite yet.

The telephone rang. The sound came from the hall, just outside the door, and after two rings Alex wondered why she didn't answer it—before recalling that the Cochranes had servants for everything. But after the third ring, Sara frowned, said, "Would you excuse me?" and dashed for the door.

It was impossible not to overhear her side of the conversation. When he realized the caller was Ben, he didn't try. He strolled over to a table near the door, on which a group of framed photographs was clustered artistically. "Yes, you've missed him, he's just leaving," she was saying. "Well, what did you expect?" The change in the tone of her voice chilled him a little; he wouldn't have thought it could sound so tense and brittle, so utterly devoid of warmth. He picked up the largest photograph, one of the Cochranes on their wedding day, and studied it while he listened. Sara looked young and fresh in her virginal white Worth gown, her beautiful face alight with hope and excitement—but not love, he thought. Perhaps it had never been a love match for either of them. Ben at thirty-five was leaner, more energetic, yet already that familiar self-satisfied look had begun to settle in his blunt-featured face.

"Yes, I'll explain it to him. Well, when
will
you be home?"

He put the photograph down and picked up another, this one of Sara, Ben, and Michael as an infant. Hope and excitement were both absent from her face now, replaced by a chilly sort of composure. Ben, standing behind mother and son, one possessive hand on his wife's shoulder, looked stern and smug and commanding. For some reason the picture repelled Alex; he put it down hastily. The rest were mostly of Michael at various ages. He saw that he had been a rather sickly child, but never less than physically beautiful, a skinny, tow-headed angel.

"Very well, yes. How many, then? Yes, all right, I said I'd take care of it." She rang off abruptly, and when she appeared in the doorway she hadn't taken the time to compose her face. Alex felt shock when he saw the strain and resentment and, under that, her desperate unhappiness. He looked away.

"That was Ben," she said with artificial ease, and when he looked back she was serene again. "He's so sorry to have missed you. He sends his apologies, but there was an unexpected situation at his office, it seems—I didn't get all the details—and he simply couldn't get away. He's so terribly sorry."

He admired her then—lying through her teeth for that son of a bitch, carrying on for courtesy and civility on behalf of a man who wasn't worth one of her little fingers. He moved toward her, wanting to touch her, but he stopped when he was three feet away.

"He asked if you'd leave the drawings, and he promised to look at them tonight. Unfortunately, he has to leave tomorrow now, not Tuesday, for Chicago. But he said he'd either call you with any new instructions or—or leave them with me."

"Well, that's fine. That's fine," he repeated, wanting to reassure her. "You could tell me what he says when I see you on Tuesday."

"Tuesday." Her somber face lightened as she remembered. "I'd forgotten—I'll see you on Tuesday."

There was a pause, while they dealt separately with the gladness they were both feeling because they would meet again on Tuesday.

"Well," Alex said. "Until then. Thank you for tea. I enjoyed it immensely."

"So did I." She went with him out into the hall. "Ben wondered if you could come to dinner on the twenty-seventh—that's Friday next."

"The twenty-seventh? Yes, thanks, I'd like that very much."

"He said to bring a friend. That is, if you'd care to. A lady, I think he meant."

She colored; he stared. It was the first time he'd ever seen her fumble in a social situation. "Thanks," he said smoothly, "I'll let you know, shall I?"

"Yes, all right."

She gave him her hand. As he held it, he wondered what she would do tonight, and whether she would accept an invitation to dinner in some discreet downtown restaurant. Too risky, of course; the moment slipped by. For just a few seconds he found himself thinking how different his life would be if he were married and had a child. She opened the door for him. He said good-bye and left her, walking west toward Fifth Avenue. At the corner he turned around. She was still there, illuminated by the house light, standing between the pretentious pair of stone lions and looking up at the pink sky.

"There it is!"

"That's it. It's called the Tower Building. How many floors does it have?"

Michael counted carefully. "Thirteen?" Alex nodded. "Wow! How does it stay up?"

"I was hoping he'd ask me that," he said, grinning at Sara. All three leaned back against the brick wall of a bank and gazed east across Broadway at Number Fifty. "How thick do you think the walls have to be to hold up a building that tall?"

"Thick!"

"How thick?"

Even Michael could see that this was a trick question, but he answered gamely, "A
mile
thick."

Alex laughed. "The whole building is only twenty-one and a half feet wide. How thick do
you
think?" he asked Sara. Taking Michael's cue, she humored him. "Three or four feet?" He shook his head, smiling with satisfaction. "Only twelve inches."

"Wow!"

"But how is that possible?" Sara asked leadingly.

"Well, it all started when a man named Stearns bought an empty lot on that spot about eight years ago. He wanted to put up an office building, but if he built a conventional stone masonry structure, the walls would have to be so thick he wouldn't have enough rentable space to turn a profit. It seemed as if he'd bought himself a white elephant."

"A white
elephant
!" Michael repeated, mystified. Sara explained; Alex continued.

"So he went to an architect, fellow named Bradford Gilbert. Gilbert thought and thought for about six months, and finally decided the solution was to build something like a steel bridge or a cage and stand it up on one end. That way the walls could be only a foot thick, and they wouldn't have to bear any weight at all."

"But how? What holds the
walls
up?" Michael wanted to know. "Long steel columns sunk deep into a cement footing underground."

"It still doesn't seem possible," said Sara.

"That's what everybody thought. But Gilbert was so sure, he offered to move into the top two floors himself, and if the building fell down he'd fall with it."

"Are all architects so brave and intrepid?"

"Yes, all," he assured her, straight-faced. "And Gilbert got to prove his mettle one Sunday morning when the building was all finished except for the roof. Guess what happened."

"What?" prodded Michael. "A hurricane hit."

"Gosh!"

Steams and Gilbert rushed over to see what was happening to their building. There was already a crowd around it, everybody yelling that the thing was damn well going to blow down. Dam well. The wind was gusting at eighty miles an hour and people started backing up, saying they didn't want to be crushed when it fell.

"Gilbert grabbed a plumb line and started to climb a ladder the workmen had left out the night before. Steams was right on his heels. 'You fools, you'll be killed!' shouted the crowd, but they kept climbing. Stearns' courage gave out on the tenth floor, he sprawled full-length on a scaffold and started praying for his life. Architects are made of sterner stuff, though, as everyone knows, and Gilbert kept going." Alex glanced down into Michael's wide-eyed, open-mouthed face, intent on the building opposite and the scene his imagination was conjuring. "On and on he climbed, rung by painful rung, knuckles white from the strain, the wind blowing and battering at him like a son of a—unmercifully. Finally he reached the thirteenth floor and crawled on his hands and knees along the scaffold to that corner of the building there. See it?"

"Yes!"

"He pulled the plumb line from his pocket, got his frozen fingers around the cord, and dropped the leaded end down toward the sidewalk. And what do you think?"

"What?"

"There wasn't the slightest vibration. The building stood steady as a rock in the ocean."

"Gosh," Michael mouthed, awed.

"When Gilbert and Steams got back to the ground, the crowd cheered them like heroes. They locked arms and started up Broadway, singing, 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow.' People coming out of Trinity Church were sore amazed."

While Michael ogled the Tower Building and hummed the hymn under his breath, Sara murmured, "Mr. McKie, is any of that true?"

"Every word, Mrs. Cochrane. Architects never lie."

It was a warm, breezy afternoon with the smell of rain in the air. They started up Broadway, looking for a streetcar that wasn't already full of bankers and Stock Exchange men heading home from work. Sara realized she'd been more fashionable than wise when she'd chosen the feathered and flowered "cartwheel" hat that went with her beige walking suit; every few steps she had to reach up with both hands to keep it from blowing off in the wind. Finally a car came that they could squeeze into, but they had to stand all the way. "Look, a parade!" cried Michael, pointing through the window at a crowd of people marching toward them on Canal Street. Sara peered, but she couldn't read their placards at this distance. They weren't paraders, she explained, they were pickets, men on strike against their employer. "Oh," said Michael. "Daddy hates that," he confided to Alex, who nodded, thinking,
I'll bet
.

They got off at Union Square. "Where should we go now," Alex asked rhetorically, "to my office or to Dean's?"

"Dean's," Michael voted unhesitatingly. "Is your office nearby?"

"Right there." He pointed to the five-story brownstone on the corner that was the unprepossessing headquarters of Draper, Snow and Ogden. He leaned down and looked Michael in the eye. "Are you saying you would rather go eat hot cross buns and ice cream than get a free tour of an actual architect's drafting room?" he demanded, which caused Michael to dissolve into giggles. "Oh, all right," he said with mock crossness. "Maybe another time."

"I hope so," said Sara, surprising herself because she meant it. "Do you live around here as well?"

"Not far. Tenth Street, over toward Sixth." She only nodded to that, making him wonder what she thought of his humble downtown address. At least he was on the West Side. The place suited him, for now; he could walk to his office, and his sixty-year-old landlady was in love with him. Constance wouldn't set foot in the place—she lived like a countess in Madison Square—but that was not without its advantages, too. Anyway, after the Newport house was finished, he could afford to move as far uptown as he wished.

Dean's was thinning out. It was really too late for tea, Sara knew, but a promise was a promise. Michael would never eat his dinner tonight, and Mrs. Drum would climb up on her high horse again. She sighed tiredly. But Ben would be in Chicago by now, and he was staying for ten days. The thought raised her spirits; she asked for ladyfingers with her coffee, and to hell with her figure.

They sat at a tiny table by the window, gazing out at the hurrying figures of men and women anxious to be home. London was far away and almost forgotten, but sometimes she contrasted its sedate, black-umbrella'd rush hour to New York's and marveled at how much busier, noisier, less
civilized
this one was. Which summed up everything she loved and hated about America, she supposed. She had lost as much as she had gained—in terms of a city to live in, that was. In personal terms—well, that was probably equal too. She'd lost her innocence and her expectations of happiness, and she'd gotten Michael. Did people get what they deserved? She didn't know. She added cream to her coffee and asked Mr. McKie what he thought of the so-called "modern" style of architecture.

He told her. Unpremeditated, even against his will, but prodded by her skillful questioning and her genuine, unaffected interest in his answers, he told her. He even confessed his ambivalence—something he had not done with anyone before, and afterward he told himself that he'd done it with Mrs. Cochrane because he was brimming over with it and she was simply the first person to pry it out of him.

While Michael ate vanilla ice cream and gazed out the window at the passersby, Alex weighed in on his favorite complaint, that America was filling up with imitations. Where was originality in this slavish enthusiasm for Greek revival, Gothic revival, Romanesque, Queen Anne, French Renaissance, Italian Renaissance, even Byzantine? Where were directness, spaciousness, and freedom? The country was wallowing in columns, turrets, pinnacles, balustrades, mansard roofs, stained glass, arches, and gables. Grandomania, that's what it was. Had Sara visited the World's Fair a few years ago in Chicago? She said that she had. Well, what did she think of an exposition that declared there had been no advances since ancient Rome and that an architect's highest duty was to copy?

"What did any of it have to do with
Chicago
!" he demanded. "Chicago is stockyards and railroads and steel mills, not dignity and classical serenity. Did you see any Romans when you were in Chicago? What's it got to do with
America
? This country is young and democratic, industrial, dynamic—where are the buildings that express that?"

"Not in Newport, I don't think," she answered with a soft smile. That shut him up. He stared back moodily, uneasy because she'd put an unerring finger on the heart of things so quickly. "Why did you take my husband's commission if you despise the kind of house he wants you to build?"

"I don't despise it," he said defensively.

"No? I beg your pardon. I thought you were a modernist; you like the skyscraper we saw today, and you—"

"No, no, it's not that simple. I like the
engineering
of the skyscraper. I admire the technology that solved a problem of space and materials with such elegance and economy. But try to imagine a city with nothing
but
skyscrapers. And you might as well, because it's coming, it's inevitable. The telephone, the elevator, the price of land in the city—they've all conspired to make it inevitable. So picture it. Barbaric, isn't it? Dark, congested, lifeless. It's not ethical, it's not beautiful, and it's not permanent. It's a commercial exploit, an
expedient
. I don't want to live in that city."

But she would not he sidetracked; she wanted to talk about him, not his philosophy. Even as it made him squirm, he found her interest seductive. "Then what will you do?" she pressed. "How will you find a middle ground? Is there a compromise?"

"Maybe, but I can't see it yet. For me, the worst is the architect who tries to turn something like a skyscraper—which can be beautiful, I don't argue that—into what it was never intended to be. He treats it like a
stone
rather than a
steel
structure and smothers it with flying buttresses and parapets and spires and balustrades. He tries to impose, say, a Gothic sensibility on a building that has absolutely nothing to do with the Gothic
spirit
. Do you see? Do you call that a compromise?"

"Yes, I think I see. But what will
you
do?"

There was no shaking her. He took refuge in cynicism. "Oh, make lots of money, I expect. Exploit my not inconsiderable talent for classical forms, ride the wave of popularity for things ancient until it crashes, and then swim very fast to catch up with the next one."

Instead of repelling her, his answer made her laugh. "If I believed that, I don't think I would like you very much, Mr. McKie."