New Yorkers (74 page)

“Oh the demimonde is not what it was,” said Mr. Olney. “Like the
Social Register,
these days. Simply anybody can get in.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, Chauncey. I like your window too. That’s why I come.”

“Same view as his. Only you’re not married to it.”

“Same? Not by half.” She sounded like my grandfather Meyer, his London twang. Out of the room, I heard things I’d never heard before. “You’ve got a fuller view of the city. I don’t know how you do it. Miles away from your money though you are.”

He chuckled again. “Who told you that story, Meyer? Or…did I?”

A hesitation. I knew it well. Whenever my mother did stop to pause, she was sad. “You did, Chauncey.” She couldn’t help it. She always spoke the truth.

“Thought I must’ve. You’re a tonic, Mirriam.”

“Don’t flirt with me, Chauncey. I don’t come for that.”

“You flirt with life. Who can resist that?”

They must have heard Proctor coming up the stairs. I did.

“No one,” said our host, in the familiar, wrapped voice which elders suddenly assumed. “Man, woman nor child.”

“I’ve been taking her everywhere,” my mother said nervously. “Maybe I shouldn’t. As one does take in—the child one bears—I find.” She sounded surprised. “Or maybe to show her how miles away we all are. From everything.”

“She’ll be safe
here,”
Mr. Olney said. “Thank you, Proctor, we’ve enough hot water. Been having trouble finding wicks for that old urn, Mirriam, but Proctor has found just the thing. What did you say it was, Proctor?”

“In Woolworth’s, sir. Wicks is gone out altogether; I’ve done with pipecleaners for years. Can’t get them because of the wire in them—the war. But there’s these toy animals still made of them. I believe they’re called a
shmo.”

Proctor came in to my side, carrying a tray with a long yellow drink capped with cream and a dish of biscuits with lemon curd and mauve fillings. Downstairs taste, and children’s. I crooked my finger at him. He bent to my whisper.

“It’s called a
shmoo.
I have one. But mine is shells.”

He nodded. Gave a flip to the transom—I would swear he slanted it more—and went out. Servants like the double life.

Against the teacup clink, the old man said, “
Simon
can’t resist. Do you have to flirt with him, just now?”

“So you’ve heard,” my mother said. “About—Nick.”

“Not by name,” he said. “I’ve no interest in that. So—it’s true.”

“
This
time—it’s true.”

I had drunk all the tall glass and begun on the biscuits. Very slowly, I began to draw with the stylus, which made a scratching noise.

“What’s that?” said my mother.

“An old game. It fascinates them. My—adopted daughter had it.”

The stylus made pushpulls and penmanship circles almost without help from me. I delved deeper into its geometric heart, full of so many tangents and talents I didn’t have.

“I won’t ruin
him,”
I heard my mother say. “Not that one. Anything of value I have to say—he already knows. He belongs to the world a-comin’. Besides, he’s getting out. To the war.”

“There’s always a world a-comin’. Though mebbe that doesn’t sound too well from a nonagenarian,” said Olney. “And you can’t keep everything.”

“Double or nothing!” said my mother. It had the loud, defiant sound that always came when she tried to lie to herself. She never got control of it.

“D’you know—?” said Chauncey. “My wife once felt the same. Whereas I’d have settled for one woman or tother. Meyer ever tell you that?”

“Not he. You men stick together. But I heard. Of a—ménage.”

“My secretary—a Mrs. Nevin. Proctor reminds me of her. She was so much—as we supposed. Quite willing to retire. To her native heath—France. And bring up the baby girl there. It was my wife who explained to her—that she couldn’t have everything. And to me.”

There was a stifled sound from my mother, but no words. The stylus made a small blot in the red ink it was using, then continued its rich tangle.

“Oh, my wife suffered too. Good hard businessmen often breed daughters like that—with robber-baron consciences.”

“No one ever accused me of that before.” My mother sounded soft, almost childish. How good he was for her! The biscuit I took melted slowly in my mouth.

“Maybe only a Christian would see it.”

“I never usually can talk—to one of them. But to sleep with them—that’s…now I’ve shocked you.”

“You hope,” said Chauncey Olney. “And it’s really quite pleasurable for a man of my years.”

“But you are a Christian. We’re brought up to think they don’t really shock.”

“That so, Mirrie?” he said politely. It was hard to hear that the old man had any voice but the polite one, but I heard. “You shock Simon. Not sexually. You get to him somewhere. I don’t know how. But isn’t that enough for you?”

The drink had made me sleepy. I put the stylus down. In the silence next door, I trifled with the ink bottles ranged in slots at its side; it had viridian and prussian blue. And a number of designs I could learn to copy too.

“He’s like a son to you, isn’t he,” said my mother.

“Yes,” said the old man. “A bastard son.” How queer that he should sound as if he were smiling. I’d known what “bastard” meant for years. She told me everything.

“Simon’s father was a romantic failure, they say. I never knew at what.”

“Give him time,” said the old man. “That’s what I—didn’t have.”

“They say he’s going to be a judge, Mirrie. I remember my father saying it. And later on too, when he told me he was going to leave him the house. I didn’t mind that. That’s the way it should be.” Was she smiling too? “But do you know how I had to learn of Simon’s larger ambitions?”

“I can guess.”

“Yes. Nick has his connections too.”

“Simon would never mention the Court. Even to himself.”

“Then it’s true.”

“I have a bet on it I may not live to see,” Chauncey said. “Give me time too, Mirriam.”

But he had so much already!—I thought—and listened for my mother; the silence was so long. How sad she must be, almost sad enough to cry. I had never seen her. Maybe here is where she came to do it, I thought.

Then I heard her speak, very low. “I’ve been taking instruction—that’s why I haven’t been here. …Oh no, Chauncey, don’t look so St. Thomasy. Not Catholic…but I’ve a dear, silly friend in Paris, Noel Ammon, he’s a convert, and every time I get a letter, he presses that. Chauncey…it might sound funny that what he says weighs with me.” My mother still sounded sad, but she was talking. “He’s a convert all right. Changed his sex, and married his gallery owner. Or maybe she changed hers.” When she waited for others to shock, my mother’s long eyes elongated even more, her mouth corners subtled, and one shoulder held still—that’s how I always knew she meant
them
to be. Never me. There were other times, terrible ones, when I was shocked, and she was past knowing it.

“We had the classics in Virginia, Mirriam.” He sounded as if he had his chin in his hand. “Go on.”

“But when he writes to me, he changes back. ‘Darling. Take instruction.
Do.’
And the tone carries
me
back. That was my decade. They were my crowd. Their wants…and sufferings…were the ones I knew. If somebody’s sick in the spirit, or brave in it—what does it matter if the only way he knows to say it is ‘I have
such
a
yen’?
…

They said
‘darling.’
All the time.”

I looked at the transom, so high, and the keyhole beneath it, so low, but had no real need for either. She’d be sitting straight now, looking straight out, and I knew that voice—the one which cut across the slang, or used it like a whip. Children at home don’t need keyholes; the voices and silences of those above ride the pipes with the bathwater, plugging ears, nose and throat against the morning cereal. The children of those who love are in the greatest peril too. Sitting at table with them, children hear the true voices, in the basement of their souls. The deaf hear that piano. She was talking the way she sometimes talked to Father. The one she was really talking to was Si.

“—But I couldn’t take religious instruction, Chauncey. We
are
it, Jews like us. It’s in the family inflection even if we don’t obey one of the laws. Know what my father used to say?
‘God
could be converted maybe. But not one of
us.’”

“St. Thomasy indeed!” said Chauncey. “But, go on.”

“So I went where you’d expect. Where so many like us do go, especially the women, in times like these—when the men still have their—busyness. ‘OK, Noel,’ I wrote, ‘I’ll try looking at life through a glass-bottomed boat. And when I see a shark smile, I’ll try not to let on I know it’s me.’” A silence. “I swore I’d never go, Chauncey. But I did. I guess you know where.”

“To Paris?” the old man said. “Hope you had the grace to go over there, for Simon’s sake. Though they still have them here, I suppose.”

“Dozens,” my mother said slowly. “Chauncey. Mind telling me just what you thought I meant?”

“Why—a brothel. Male brothels, as a matter of fact.” I heard his hands clap together. “Praise be. My century’s shocked yours.”

After a silence, my mother said, “I wish I’d had you at the doctor’s…Do you think that girl’s asleep?”

“Proctor’s eggnogs have a good deal of sherry in them…Ah—doctors…Well, each fifty years to its own. My father-in-law’s was the century of steam. You young people are more interested in your own self-combustion.”

“Young, Chauncey?…And what’s yours?”

“A man never really knows the watermark of his own age.”

Century, century—it was a word to put anyone to sleep. I thought I was.

“But that’s why I went to the doctor,” said my mother. “God forgive me, I don’t know why it should be me to see it…but I’m afraid I do. That’s what I told him when he asked what I was there for. ‘I’m a woman the wind blows through,’ I said. ‘Tell me if it speaks the truth.’”

I was asleep. For a minute, or a century, which has taken me all the years since to reconstruct. For when I woke, or seemed to. she was talking in the way I dreaded, that no one could stop, nor she. How terrible it is, Austin, when that wind blows through the one one loves. Chauncey wasn’t in love as I was. He loved my
father.
That was the difference.

“The doctor couldn’t help me,” said my mother. “‘The open secrets,’ I said to him—‘those are the ones I am doomed to keep.’ Oh, at first it was easy…‘I should warn you,’ I said. ‘I’m used to telling people everything; this is nothing new to me. I give you all little shocks—because the bigger ones you would never believe. Not from me, anyway. Especially not from me…Oh, when I see the shark smile, you see, I always know it’s me.’
‘Shark?’
he said, and began to write. But after a while, he began to get used to me. And to dismiss my language; Which is all I’ve got. ‘Tell me who you think you are,’ he said, ‘in the plainest language you can.’ ‘My language is always plain,’ I said. ‘Some think it’s too sharp altogether. What you want, Doctor—is obscurity to me. But I’ll try.’…His office is on a Park Avenue corner. ‘I’m one of the women upstairs,’ I said. ‘I’m a woman upstairs.’
‘Upstairs?’…
‘Yes, Doctor, you must have dozens, in this apartment house.’ (They have, Chauncey. The sibyls of society whom nobody will believe. Who have the vote.) ‘Driving their husbands mad with closet-building, Doctor. Do you tell them how to live—or how to build closets more happily?’…I could tell from his smile that the charm had begun. ‘They tell
me!’…
So I told him. ‘So when you were young you wanted to paint, draw, dance, be an artist, Mrs. Mannix?’ ‘Never,’ I said. ‘I was never one of those.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I was brought up a connoisseur!’ ‘So you collected artists,’ he said. ‘Why?’ Oh, he was sharp—those are the ones I charm best. And he helped me of course, like any audience. Those long-ago studio days, why had I hung about to reverence anyone with clay under his nails? ‘Because when the wind blows through
them,’
I said, ‘it stops. For a short moment—it stops.’

“And it was that second I chose to want to burst out crying, Chauncey, isn’t that strange? I never cry, not since I was fifteen. ‘Why are you shivering?’ he said. ‘At the truth,’ I said. ‘A silver flash between the tongue and the ear. Even when they’re only mine.’…They don’t cry either—catch them weeping for the world!…‘So you’re hollow,’ he said keenly. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Like a harp.’ And because they love to talk about money, it obsesses them, I leaned my glove on the desk, with the dollar for the cab already in it. ‘My family made its money out of music, Doctor. So I suppose it’s natural.’”

I was asleep in the deep of the chair, of this house. I was safe here. Out of the wind.

“And the next time, for there were only three”—said my mother—“when he leaned forward—he always sat opposite, I’ll say that for him—I gave him his money’s worth. Not sex, Chauncey; that’s only
their
language…Tell me more about the women upstairs,’ he said. ‘Women?’ I said. ‘The hysterics of society. Whom nobody believes. And they’ve reason. We never stop. Your own mother was probably one, Doctor. Men like you always have them.’ ‘Not mine,’ he said. ‘We weren’t from your—echelon. She had to work.’…‘No exemption. We Cassandras are from all classes. My husband’s mother’s family nickname was Xantippe—a lower order. But sterner. She never wanted to get out of the cosmos, that one. She stayed and stayed.’ He burst out laughing. ‘That good old Jewish mother-tongue. Yes, I recognize it. And then he said,
‘Out’?”

In my dream of sleep, or of terror accompanied, I heard the old man get up from his chair. He had a walk like a pendulum. “Mirriam.” He must be standing by her chair. Virginians give a little flip to one diphthong. I hear it yet as he said it. “Out?” And then—“Mirriam. You’re not flirting—with
that?”

You’ll have seen clocks that don’t have arc pendulums, Austin, but a little cage that turns this way, then that. My mother’s changes were like that, not an about-face or an arc—a turning, this way, that, of the cage itself. A role that doesn’t stop—won’t. Can’t. “Oh, I couldn’t have been an actress after all, Ruth,” she said once. “I won’t bow.”