Constance Read online

  —I don’t think I want to do medicine.

  —Oh, for Christ’s sake. Don’t even talk like that. You have to, for Daddy’s sake.

  I got impatient with her. She’d been able to laugh at herself once. Now she was so damn sulky all the time. When a thing’s over it’s over, I said. What was wrong with her? She began to grope in her purse. She fetched out her cigarettes and a lighter. I suggested we take a walk. I wanted to get her out of the building, it was unpleasantly warm and there was too much noise. Without a word she stood up and went into her bedroom to get dressed.

  We walked east. The weather remained oppressive. Down by the Brooklyn Bridge the streets were deserted. The silence was a relief. There were a few pigeons around but no other signs of life. Half the buildings on Beekman were boarded up. The whole neighborhood was being demolished, warehouses, printing establishments, liquor stores, barber shops. Where the rubble had been trucked away tracts of wasteland strewn with lumps of concrete stretched for blocks. It didn’t improve Iris’s mood but I got a kind of satisfaction from seeing a whole section of the city disappearing as though it had been H-bombed, and I felt the same about Penn Station, which was also coming down. I passed through it whenever I took the train upstate. They were turning it into a ruin. I liked ruins. I’d grown up in one, of course. Sweep away the old stuff, this was my feeling. Start over! Build it new! Then it began to rain. We were out front of a warehouse on William Street with no door.

  We climbed the narrow staircase. The paint was flaking off the wall. One floor up the stairs opened into an empty loft with exposed brick painted white. Old iron radiators stood amid the trash and at the far end empty window frames looked south to the Wall Street skyscrapers. There was a picture of Marilyn Monroe taped to the brick and beneath it a rickety wooden chair. Iris sat down and lit a cigarette. The rain continued heavy. She stared at the floor and I saw a tear fall. She looked up, wiping her face. At times she seemed so young I was moved by her predicament. But mostly I just got impatient with her.

  —I don’t know if I’ll survive this, she said.

  —Are you serious?

  —I’ve never loved anyone like this before. I’d better get used to it.

  —To what?

  —Being incomplete.

  I cleared a space on the floor and sat down beside her.

  —Oh, honey, I said, you’ll get over it, what are you, twenty-two?

  She turned on me.

  —Constance, will you just shut the fuck up?

  I guess it was a thoughtless thing to say. The wound was too fresh or something. I apologized.

  —It’s okay. But you don’t have to reassure me. I hate being reassured.

  I asked her why she wouldn’t get over him.

  —We never got to the end. It was still growing. It would have gone on growing a long time. So it’s this unfinished thing in me.

  I’d never heard love described like this before. As a growing thing, I mean, like a tree. So it comes to life, it grows to maturity, then what, death? It had never happened to me that way. A little later she asked me if I thought he saw a shrink.

  —No.

  —Why do you say that?

  —I just don’t think he does.

  —But why? He said he didn’t but I don’t believe it. Everyone in New York sees a shrink except me.

  —He’s from Miami. He’s a piano player. He’s a lush. Honey, I don’t know, I just don’t think he does.

  She didn’t want to hear the truth but at the same time candor was what she said she wanted.

  —What are you doing tonight? she said.

  —Some party Sidney wants to go to.

  —Come out with me. It doesn’t matter about the party.

  —It does to Sidney.

  —Constance, please.

  —Why is it a problem?

  —I’m afraid I’ll lose you.

  —Don’t be absurd. Iris, this is madness!

  She stood up. She walked to the window and with her hands on the sill she leaned out. I was suddenly afraid for her. I’d never seen her like this. It wasn’t just the man. I told her to come away from the window. She said the rain had stopped. We could go.

  We walked east to the seaport. The day was brighter now. The sun was breaking through. The stink of fish from the Fulton Street market made me feel nauseous. Iris suggested a cocktail.

  —It’s not even twelve o’clock, I said.

  —Just one.

  We sat at a table in an empty bar on South Street. I’d never known her to drink liquor in the middle of the day and it didn’t make me feel any easier about her. When she decided to have another one I had to speak up.

  —Won’t you need a clear head later?

  —No.

  —Why not?

  —The work I do, you think they care?

  When the affair with Eddie ended she’d quit her job at the hotel and joined an agency that supplied hostesses to nightclubs. They gave her three nights a week. It was enough to sustain life, she said. She didn’t have many overheads.

  —Isn’t that the truth. But I’m worried about you.

  It was true. I was worried. I didn’t believe Iris could be brought so low by a man—and a man like that! She laughed but it was hollow. As though she’d stopped caring what happened to her.

  —It’s not as though anyone gives a damn, she said.

  —I do.

  She said nothing. Suddenly I felt not that she was losing me but that I was losing her. I didn’t know what was going on. I’d assumed she was more resilient than this. She’d gone to the counter to get her scotch, and in the gloom of the place she was consumed by shadows and I couldn’t see her properly. I felt like she was drifting out to sea—

  You want a drink? said Sidney.

  I was rudely jolted from my somber thoughts.

  —Not yet. And I don’t think you should have one either.

  I was still angry with him. I think I was also guilty about Iris and taking it out on him. But what was I, some kind of alcohol cop now?

  —Sidney, sweetheart, please go away.

  I finished with my eyes then slipped off the bathrobe and examined myself in the long mirror. I may have been a few years older than Iris but you wouldn’t know it. Sidney used to say I had a boy’s body, these days he’d prefer it if I was a boy, I wasn’t much use to him as a girl. I opened my underwear drawer and fingered my silky things. There was a tune in my head, Moon River. Moon River. It had been troubling me for days.

  The party was an anticlimax. A man Sidney wanted to meet who’d written a book didn’t show and he was irritated. He was also mad at me about something I’d said. I freely admit I’d been less than sweetly charming all night but hell, it was an uptown crowd of professors and they weren’t interested in me, some mere editorial person.

  When we got home I said so and next thing we were arguing, never a good idea after a few drinks. We went back and forth for a while and then I left the room. I wanted a cigarette but where could I get one now? I became aware of movement down the hallway. Standing in his pajamas gazing at me in the dim glow of the night-light was Howard. He was a restless sleeper like me. Swiftly I went to him.

  —What are you doing?

  —You woke me up.

  I took his hand and led him back into his bedroom.

  —I’m so sorry, I whispered. Let’s get you back in bed, shall we?

  I sat him down on the bed and he wriggled in under the sheet. He turned on his side and gazed up at me.

  —Were you and Papa fighting?

  —Just talking loud. Go to sleep now.

  —Talking loud, he murmured, and fell asleep.

  I sat beside him on the bed for a few minutes. When I left him I met Sidney in the hallway.

  —He asleep? he said.

  I nodded. I put my arms round him. He was surprised. I asked him to hold me. Tentatively at first, then with more conviction, he held me. I felt quiet now. His presence sometimes had this effect. I lay my cheek
on his shoulder. He began to stroke my hair. Then he lifted my chin and took my face in his fingers and kissed me. He steered me toward the bedroom. Once, we’d resolved all our quarrels in bed. When we were inside he kicked the door shut. He pushed me down on the bed. He began to undress me. I sat up. I wasn’t sure I wanted this.

  —Sidney—

  —Don’t talk.

  He watched me closely as he stepped out of his trousers. Then he was lying beside me on the bed.

  —Just wait, I whispered, I’m not ready. All right, that’s better. Now you can.

  Times like that I loved him but they were rare.

  I went by Iris’s apartment again the next day. I wanted to know if she’d thought any more about medical school. Her eyes were red and her hair was lank and sweaty: two bad nights and she looked like death. She told me that more and more she was losing the thread and drifting into the past.

  —Oh, honey.

  I didn’t find it easy to contain my irritation. Distinct scenes presented as though from some ill-remembered movie, she said, and it was the passion of those days that roused such anguish in her. But then she was telling me she wasn’t the woman she’d been when she first met him. You laugh, Constance, she said, but it’s true: I’ve changed. I’ve grown up. I can love that man now, and the irony is I won’t be given a chance even though he needs me—

  This was Iris, clinging to a fraying thread of hope, sustaining the belief that the man wasn’t lost to her forever. I thought about it in the subway going home, crowded between men in thin ties and bad-tempered women exhausted from fending them off. But of course he was lost to her. She would never get him back now. She was drinking heavily, often alone, and I suspected her life had gone off the rails in ways she wasn’t telling me about. And her response when I’d asked her what this “hostessing” involved!

  —It’s just looking after men.

  —What do you mean?

  —They have to have a good time. Spend money.

  —On you?

  —Sure, on me! What is this, the third degree? You think I have sex with them?

  —Do you?

  She gave me a look I found hard to read. I knew what it wasn’t, it wasn’t an outraged negative.

  —Iris, are you whoring?

  —Very funny.

  I left her in good spirits, halfway drunk at five in the afternoon. I thought, New York’s going to destroy that girl if she’s not careful.

  Later with Gladys’s help I made supper for Howard. He was sitting quietly at the kitchen table. Then he looked up and made his solemn announcement.

  —Constance and Papa weren’t fighting last night. They were just talking loud.

  Gladys was amused. What an odd little boy he was. I was growing fond of him.

  —That’s right, Howard, I said. We were just talking loud.

  Chapter 2

  The day they started tearing down the old Penn Station I heard from my lawyer, Ed Kaplan, that the divorce from Barb had gone through. Ed commiserated. Sidney, he said, it’s nobody’s fault. I didn’t believe him. It wasn’t nobody’s fault, I said, there’d been love when we started, what happened to it? I let it die. My son Howard, age six, was living with his mother in New Jersey and I was supposed to be relieved that a bad and worsening marital situation had come to an end? I wasn’t. All I saw was failure.

  Now we were divorced. I wandered from room to room and grew disconsolate at the unfamiliar silence. I’d held on to the apartment because Barb didn’t want it. She wanted to be in Atlantic City with her family. Her brother Gerry Mulcahy managed a small casino there.

  —It’s not the other side of the world, she said.

  —It’s far enough. When will I ever see my son?

  —Whenever you want.

  Barb did the accounting for the casino and I only discovered much later how ill she was. I was aware of her fatigue each time I drove out to New Jersey to take Howard for the afternoon. I attributed it to the tedium of her job and the awfulness of living in Atlantic City among members of her own family. They weren’t an inspiring outfit but they were friendly enough to me. They called me “the professor.” I knew that if I’d been able to sustain the marriage, Barb’s life wouldn’t have been half so miserable as it turned out, and I said this to her on one of my visits. She was renting a place a block from her mother’s house. Howard was in the yard, I could see him out there on his hands and knees. He was interested in snails at the time. She’d leaned across the table and touched my cheek.

  —Sidney, she’d said, it’s not your fault, but thanks for the thought.

  What went wrong? She was a good- looking woman and we’d liked each other well enough once. Then out of the blue she decided that I wasn’t giving her what she needed, and that what I did give her she didn’t want. Resentment broke out, and once that happens the sex life goes all to hell and soon the marriage was wrecked beyond repair. It was all too depressing to contemplate. I’m with Goethe on the correct response to a failing marriage. Resignation. The preservation of order at all costs. Stoic nobility of spirit. But I wasn’t allowed to suffer with stoic nobility of spirit, instead Barb moved out, taking Howard with her, and that’s why I had the place to myself. It was on West Sixty-ninth, a few blocks from Central Park. There was no shortage of bookshelves, all of which I’d filled, and numerous rooms including an airless spare bedroom that gave off the kitchen. But it was too big for one man, and there was a problem with the boiler in the basement. The super couldn’t control it. In winter the pipes in the walls got so hot it was like living in a steam bath. If I opened a window I got a blast of frigid air. So I either baked or froze, like some kind of a reptile. A large English crocodile perhaps.

  I was too restless to read and it was too late to do any writing, and anyway I’d had a drink. So I went to bed at half past nine with a couple of scholarly journals and that day’s newspaper. The neighborhood got noisy around ten. In those days there was always shouting at night, sometimes screaming, only on rare occasions gunshots. Then I’d hear the sirens of approaching cop cars, or I wouldn’t. Often they just didn’t show. What was happening was this. The city had started to show symptoms of the sickness that would rip it apart and leave us unable to heal ourselves, or police ourselves, even pay for ourselves. New York was remaking itself, but into what? Barb believed no marriage could survive in a city like that. It was another bad theory of breakdown in my opinion. Nobody’s fault, contingent circumstances: all excuses. Why did nobody take responsibility?

  As for Penn Station, apparently there was no money in railroads anymore. Interstate highways and airplanes had done them in. Anyway it had been deteriorating for decades. It was neglected and begrimed, it took up two entire city blocks, and in New York it just made no economic sense, unless you believed that a railroad station possessing all the solemn grandeur of a Gothic cathedral was worth preserving for its own sake. It broke my heart to see the demolition crew arrive with their jackhammers that drizzly morning in October, the day I got divorced for the second time.

  Three years it took them to strip it down to a skeletal structure of steel girders and dump its columns and statuary in the New Jersey Meadowlands, where you could see it from the Philadelphia train and weep. I wept. All this with no interruption in service, which New Yorkers soon took for granted, oblivious to the staggering acts of vandalism going on around them—

  Forgive me. I feel about architecture as I do about marriage. What was done to Penn Station was wanton. I hate to see a thing destroyed before its time. I tried to stay busy. I was writing a book called The Conservative Heart and lecturing at one of the city colleges, which at least got me out of the building and provided what social life I required. When I received invitations to faculty parties and other functions I tossed them in the trash.

  Months passed, gloomy, solitary months for me. My spirit walked not with the souls of men. Fall turned to winter, winter to spring. The pipes in the apartment cooled down but the city itself became unendurable as the t
emperature started to rise, also the tempers of my restive fellow citizens. Meanwhile The Conservative Heart advanced fitfully. One day it was brilliant, the next it stank. The problem was this. I was known to be a brilliant lecturer. What was so hard to communicate on paper was the excitement I aroused when I spoke to a packed lecture hall. I was often swept away when an idea caught fire in my mind, and more was taught then than could ever be expressed in sober prose. Often I despaired as I struggled to articulate, oh, the apparent paradox of romantic conservatism, or the seven principles of inspiration as I’d first formulated them in my postdoctoral work at Oxford.

  I missed talking to Barb about it. How do writers alone survive? What had once been unimaginable was now my reality. But I got used to it, the absence of a domesticity that once had irritated me but that now I missed. I drove down to Atlantic City to see Howard whenever I could. Barb and I behaved in front of him with stiff formality at first, but later with more warmth. She wasn’t looking well and I guess I wasn’t either. I told her I’d arrived at no startling thesis regarding marriage and its discontents, but privately I’d decided that my own recent performance unfitted me for further service. I shared these thoughts with Ed Kaplan. He’d come by to commiserate some more.

  Ed practiced criminal law but he’d handled the divorce as a personal favor. He was fascinated by the new condition of life he found me in. To live alone in the unmarried state was to Ed an extraordinary thing. As it was to me. He said he didn’t get it. He was married to a lovely dark creature called Naomi and they lived down the block with their four daughters, whom they were apparently raising as anarchists. He liked to ask me what my plans were. What did I intend to do with myself now?

  —Work.

  —Just work? All work? No play?

  —No play.

  —Sidney, trust me, you’re not made for this. You need a woman. You better get out there and see what’s around.

  —Ed, for Christ’s sake. No woman wants me now.

  —You don’t know that until you meet her. You think you’ll never marry again?

  —That’s what I do think.