Under My Skin (42 page)

He takes me to see the Statue of Liberty from Brooklyn Bridge and she is green and tall and standing there surrounded by boats and ice.

‘What do you think when you see her?’ he asks and I say, ‘Pride,’ and he smiles and says, ‘I think Hope.’ Then we go to the Metropolitan Museum and see the pencil sketches by van Gogh. We eat hotdogs for lunch on a bench in Central Park. And around us the dog-walkers make their way through a foot of snow and the ice skaters make slow smooth circles on the rink.

‘We need to buy the tree,’ he says and his nose and ears are red with cold. It is the kind of frosted air that makes your eyes stream and your head ache. ‘Then we might have dinner in Jules.’ He knows this is my favourite restaurant and that I love the beaded partitions and how the candles flicker when the door opens and another customer comes in. Then he says, ‘If we have time,’ and I don’t know what that means, so I go, ‘Of course we have time. We have all the time in the world.’

The Christmas tree is more than six feet tall and we choose it together after a long debate. On the way back we push it and pull it and everyone laughs when we meet them on the street. We stand with it in the elevator and when the door opens no else can fit inside.

There are pale blue baubles and some are see-through and others are white and gold. We attach each one carefully and neither of us says a word. Now and then he glances at the window and then he says, ‘It’s getting dark.’ He does not have a star and I tease him about this and instead he takes out a tired-looking angel with one wing and dried-out yellow hair. He smiles that smile he has, the one I will always remember seeing in the hardware store, and then he says, ‘May I?’ and he climbs the ladder and puts the angel up high.

When the telephone rings he does not move to answer it and then when I reach for it, he frowns and says, ‘I’ll get it.’

‘Hi,’ he says and then there is a long silence as he lets the other person talk. Then he says, ‘OK. Four o’clock,’ and he puts the telephone down and now for some reason he won’t meet my eyes.

‘I have a surprise for you,’ he says slowly. ‘I want to take you to Gapstow Bridge.’

And when he speaks he is already walking towards the closet for his coat. It is still bright outside but there are more snow clouds gathering over the skyscrapers and the Park.

‘We need to hurry,’ he says and he is still avoiding my eyes. All day he has been different and I go along with it and only ask, ‘We need to be at Jules for six, will we make it back?’

‘We’ll make it,’ he says.

Central Park is almost empty. The last remaining people walk hurriedly towards the nearest gate. The trees stand like dark people with wild black hair and the lights are blinking on and there are still people laughing on the ice-rink. He walks quickly beside me, and then one hand reaches out for me and we hold mittened hands. We reach the bridge and it is silent and empty – a snow-covered stone bridge that curves romantically upward and then gently slopes back down again.

The branches from the trees are white and ahead of us is the Chrysler building and a grey damp mist. The air feels thick with another snowfall and I’m feeling worried because it’s getting dark. Arthur stands for a moment on the bridge and looks into a deep copse of trees. He breathes slowly in and out and his blue eyes squint a little in the cold. Lately I have begun to see things about him and sometimes now he just seems… so… old.

‘I want you to wait here,’ he says.

‘Here? Why?’

‘Because – I want you to – don’t be afraid.’

‘But… I want you to stay with me.’ But he says nothing and just looks out over those dark trees.

‘Please,’ I tell him and he turns and looks right into my eyes and says simply, ‘I’m going to wait over here by the gate.’

‘But why can’t you wait here… Arthur… Arthur?’ and then he answers and with only one glance backwards.

‘I can’t.’

Glassman did not wait at the gate as he promised. He saw the younger man approach before she did and with that he began to walk away. He would not think about her now and how beautiful her eyes were or how fresh her skin was in the cold.
He would not think of how she had curled herself into him that morning and how he had clutched her and wondered how he would ever be crazy enough to let her go.

‘Let her decide,’ The Chief said. ‘She deserves to know.’

A part of him had always known she was on loan to him and that one day she would return home to be with someone else. He had wanted her to love the city and somehow believed she would grow to love them both. As he walked out on to Fifth Avenue he was elbowed at the subway entrance as people rushed to make an early train. The wind lifted and like the other New Yorkers he bent a little and went on bravely, because they had no other choice but to face the cold.

He told himself that he did not really care for her. That their connection had not gone below her lovely face. He would not think about her eyes now either and that unbearable fragility and then that surprising bright smile in between all sorts of pain. He would tell himself other things about her now and as the wind lifted mufflers and sucked at umbrellas, he would not turn around and see her, looking puzzled and covered in new snowflakes, because he knew he would fall in love with her all over again.

When The Chief called he answered, ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes, it’s done,’ and The Chief made him promise to have Christmas with him. He said, ‘The holidays will be rough for everyone this year,’ and he cleared his throat, and in the background Glassman could hear Maggie answer the front door and the sounds of laughing people coming in. And The Chief said gruffly over the noise of their visitors, ‘Arthur, you’re not on your own.’

But when he sat on the floor of his sitting room and turned the Christmas tree lights on, Glassman felt his heart breaking and he wanted to call The Chief back and say, ‘Yes, I am, John.
I am alone.’ He did not know how long he sat there for, but he seemed to wake sitting upright with his back to the wall. He wondered if any minute there would be a knock on his door or if the phone would ring – and he even wondered if he might find her waiting for him in Jules. So he waited and as the city grew quieter and quieter, the only sound was the switch on the wall which he kept pressing with his fingers and making the white Christmas tree lights flash off and on.

He sighed then and looking up at the roof he reached the same decision he had reached when he met his good friend at the deli the night before.

Glassman did not turn the bathroom light on. He walked towards the medical cabinet and felt for a new syringe and the bottle of morphine.

‘He has good veins.’ He remembered how a doctor had once praised him for that. And in his sickly state he had managed to feel some sense of pride.

He avoided the hallway mirror and the one in the kitchen – and he threw a sweater over the one at the end of his bed. He took a deep breath and then calmly drawing the morphine into the syringe, he placed the cold needle against his skin.

He noticed for the first time that the small green flowers on the wallpaper were in groups of three and then two and then one. ‘Three and then two and then one’ and he thought it was some kind of irony that was his life. Then he smiled at the idea of that. And how when a man dies he should have something more profound on his mind.

‘Here lies poor Glassman, he hated broccoli and eggs.’ She had even persuaded him to eat greenery. Now even his dull epitaph would not be safe.

He liked to imagine that when his spirit lifted it would be transparent and invisible to the naked eye. That it would turn
into glass and then some fine sparkling crystal and then shatter and send him into a million pieces across the Manhattan sky.

‘There goes Glassman,’ people would say, and outside, it would hardly be noticed that the snow for a moment had turned to hail. He wanted to feel that he was ready and that he could go – as he wanted to – without seeing himself in the mirror and knowing that the last face he saw was the face of Hope Swann.

‘A real beauty,’ he said to himself and his fingers tightened around the syringe and his thumb tensed a little, ready to push the needle in. He thought about the people he had loved in his life – his mother – Elsa Graham – Hope – The Chief – Trudy – and then he thought about Matilda whose face seemed to move towards him in the darkened room.

‘It would be just my luck to meet her in the next life as well,’ and even now his own words made him want to laugh. He managed to smile and at the same time he thought about Hope’s face again and wondered what she would have to say about all of this.

‘What on earth are you doing, Arthur?’ He could almost hear her voice.

He swallowed slowly.

His right hand relaxed its grip.

He put the syringe back on the locker and sat up again.

Whatever happened he knew now that she would come back to tell him. She was the kind of girl who would want a proper goodbye. She would be cold and hungry and she would like some spaghetti. And he knew how to make a good Pasta Putana now – amongst other things, she had also taught him that.

It is cold on this bridge and I am thinking about Matilda and all the things she taught me about New York – the shutters shooting up on Broadway on a bright fall morning, ten different kinds of coffee from a paper cup, those ferocious red leaves and the yellow taxis, and yet she never once mentioned how beautiful and quiet it all gets in the snow. Yet that one line is the thing I remember most from her

– One big love
– One big love
– One big love.

And I just keep saying it as I wait here for Glassman to return to the bridge. In my mind I can see Jonathan and his fresh white shirt. I can see Arthur and then a man who lives on a boat. All these people, and why did I meet them? Did any of them come close to being ‘One Big Love’?

Around me there are fewer and fewer people and the lights on the ice-rink are going off now one by one.

And then I see a man on his own. He is coming towards me, just walking with his head down and his shoulders rounded into the wind.

He is just like any other man in this city, wearing a coat and a muffler and gloves. His hands go deep into his pockets now and his ears are red with cold.