One Fifth Avenue

by Candace Bushnell

  “She’s on morphine,” the nurse said. “She’s going to be confused for a few days, aren’t you, dear?”

  His mother began to cry. “I don’t want to be a burden to you and your sister. Maybe they should put me to sleep.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,” Billy said. “You’re going to be fine.”

  When visiting hours were over, the doctor pulled him aside. The operation had gone fine, but they wouldn’t know when or if his mother would be able to walk. In the meantime, she’d have to be in the wheelchair. Billy nodded and picked up his Gaultier bag, thinking how incongruous the expensive French luggage looked in this sad local hospital, then waited outside in the cold for thirty minutes for a taxi that took him the twenty miles to his mother’s house. The taxi cost a hundred and thirty dollars, and Billy winced at the price. With his mother injured, he would need to start saving money. In the snow next to the driveway, he saw the imprint of his mother’s body where she had fallen.

  The back door was unlocked, and entering the kitchen, Billy found two bags of groceries on the counter, obviously placed there by a kind paramedic. Although he’d always considered himself a cynic, recently Billy had noticed that random acts of human kindness now caused him to become sentimental. Feeling heavy of heart, he began unpacking the groceries. In one bag was a warm container of light cream. This was what would have caused his mother’s unfortunate trip to the store. Billy still insisted on using light cream in his coffee.

  He arrived at the hospital the next morning at nine. His sister came shortly thereafter, accompanied by her younger child, Dominique, a scrawny girl with thin blond hair and a nose like a beak; she looked just like her father, a local carpenter who had grown marijuana in the summers and eventually gotten arrested.

  Billy tried to talk to the girl, but she was either not interested or not educated. She admitted that she hated reading books and hadn’t read Harry Potter. What did she do, then? Billy asked. She talked to her friends on the Internet. Billy raised his eyebrows at his sister, but she shrugged. “I can’t keep her off it. No one can keep their kids off it, and frankly, no one has time to monitor their kids every minute. Especially me.”

  Billy had some feeling for the girl—after all, she was a blood relative—but was saddened by her as well. The little girl was on the border of becoming white trash, he decided, and he was struck by the irony of how hard his own parents had worked to be upper-middle-class, to make sure their children were educated, to expose them to culture (his father had played Beethoven in his office), only to produce a granddaughter who would not even read. The Dark Ages, Billy thought, were just around the corner.

  He spent a long day with his mother. She was in a cast from her knee to her waist. He held her hand. “Billy,” she said. “What’s going to happen to me?” “You’re going to be fine, Ma, you’ll see.” “What if I can’t drive?” “We’ll figure it out.” “What if I have to go into a nursing home? I don’t want to go to a nursing home. I’ll die there.” “I won’t let it happen, Ma.” His stomach churned with fear. If it came to that, how could he prevent it? He had no means to do otherwise.

  His sister asked him to dinner at her house—nothing fancy, macaroni and cheese. Laura lived a short distance away from their mother in a large ranch house that their father had bought her after her first divorce. It was a mystery to the family why Laura, who was a lawyer, could never manage to make ends meet, but since she was a writer of legal briefs, Billy suspected she didn’t make as much money as her law degree would imply. And she was a spender. Her house had wall-to-wall carpeting, a dinette set, display cases of porcelain figurines, a collection of teddy bears, four TVs, and in the living room, a modular sofa in which each piece had cupholders and retractable footrests. The thought of spending the evening in such an environment filled Billy with dread—he knew it would leave him unbearably depressed—and so he invited Laura and her daughter to their mother’s house instead.

  He made an herb-roasted chicken, roasted potatoes with rosemary, haricots verts, and an arugula salad. He had learned to cook from the private chefs of his wealthy friends, for he always made it a point to mix with the staff in the kitchen. His niece, Dominique, was fascinated—apparently, she’d never seen anyone cook before. Studying the girl, Billy decided she might have potential. Her eyes were wide-set, and she had a pretty smile, although her incisors were as pointy as a dog’s. “What will Dominique do when she grows up?” he asked his sister when they were in the kitchen, cleaning up after the meal.

  “How should I know? She’s twelve,” Laura said.

  “Does she have any interests? Special talents?”

  “Besides pissing me off? She says she wants to be a vet when she grows up. I said the same thing when I was twelve. It’s something all little girls say.”

  “Do you wish you were a vet now?” Billy asked.

  “I wish I was married to Donald Trump and lived in Palm Beach,” Laura said. She smacked herself on the forehead. “I knew I forgot something. I should have married a rich guy.”

  “You might think about sending Dominique to Miss Porter’s in Connecticut.”

  “Right,” Laura said. “So she can marry a rich guy. Of course. There’s only one problem. It takes money to get money, remember? Unless one of your rich-lady friends wants to give her a scholarship.”

  “I have connections,” Billy said. “I might be able to make it happen.”

  His sister turned on him. “Connections?” she said. “What planet do you live on, Billy? Mom is in the hospital, and all you can think about is sending my daughter to a private school to learn how to sip tea?”

  “You might find life more tolerable if you learned to speak to people in a civilized manner,” Billy responded.

  “Are you saying I’m not civilized?” Laura threw a dish towel on the counter. “I’m sick of it. All you do is come back here with your snotty New York attitude and act like everyone is below you. Like you’re something special. And what have you done with your life? You don’t even have a job. Unless you call escorting old ladies a job.” She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, straddling the slate-tiled floor like a prize-fighter. “And don’t you even think about going back to New York,” she hissed. “You’re not going to leave me here to clean up the mess. I’ve been taking care of Ma for the last fifteen years. I’m done. It’s your turn.”

  They stared at each other with hatred.

  “Excuse me, Laura,” Billy said, pushing past her. “I’m going to retire for the evening.” And he went up to his room.

  It was his old room, unchanged, although their mother had turned Laura’s room into a guest bedroom. He lay on the bed, a four-poster with Ralph Lauren bedding from the early eighties, when Ralph had just ventured into home furnishings. The bedding was vintage, as, Billy realized, was he. He took a Xanax to soothe his anxiety and, at random, picked out a book from the shelves encasing one window. He turned it over and looked at the title: Death in Venice by Thomas Mann.

  This was all too apt, and he put the book aside, wishing he’d bought the tabloid magazines at the supermarket. He took an Ambien, turned off the light, and prepared for the obscurity of sleep, but it wouldn’t come. Instead, the reality of his troubles grew, and he imagined them like boulders being placed, one after another, on top of his body, slowly crushing him until eventually, his chest caved into his spinal cord and he was painfully suffocated to death.

  But then an idea caused him to sit up and turn on the light. He got out of bed and began pacing in front of the fireplace. He could fix his problems, his mother’s problems, even his sister’s problems with one simple transaction. He could sell the Cross of Bloody Mary. It might easily fetch three million dollars or more. He could pay for private nurses to care for his mother, send Dominique to private school, even buy his apartment. If he owned his apartment outright, he could live out his days on lower Fifth Avenue in a pleasant cocoon of civilized behavior. But in the next moment, reality intruded. He could never
sell the cross. It was a purloined antiquity, as dangerous as a loaded gun. There were people who dealt with such items, smuggling them around the world to the highest bidders, who would salivate at the possibility of getting their hands on it. But selling antiquities was an international crime, and people did get caught. Just last month, a smuggler had been arrested in Rome and sentenced to jail for fifty years.

  The next morning, his mother was worse; an infection had set in. She might be in the hospital another week or more. Her insurance would run out, and she’d have to go on Medicaid, which meant she’d be moved to a less expensive hospital in the center of Springfield. “I’m sorry, Billy,” she said, squeezing his hand. She was exhausted, and her eyes were full of fear. “Who would have thought our lives would come to this?” she whispered.

  When she fell asleep, Billy went out for some fresh air. He bought a pack of cigarettes at a newsstand, although he’d given up smoking years ago, when hostesses stopped allowing it in their apartments. He sat down on a bench. It was another cold, gray New England day, threatening snow that would not come. He inhaled deeply. The sharp smoke hit his lungs, and immediately he felt dizzy and a little nauseated. He took a breath and kept smoking.

  Over the next few days, while his mother remained in the hospital, Billy began smoking again to ease his stress. When he smoked, he had the same conversation with himself: No matter what he did, he was ruined. If he didn’t sell the cross—out of misguided morality—his mother would suffer needlessly and probably die. If he did sell the cross, he would suffer his conscience. Even if he didn’t get caught, he would feel like a criminal among the rarefied set in which he moved. He reminded himself that his kind of morality was old-fashioned, though. Nobody cared anymore.

  On the third day, a nurse walked by. “Merry Christmas,” she said.

  “Merry Christmas,” he replied, remembering that it was Christmas morning. He ground out his cigarette with the tip of his Prada loafer. He would sell the cross. He didn’t have a choice. And if he could find the right private buyer, he just might get away with it.

  Mindy loved the holidays in New York City. Every year, she put up a tree purchased from the deli around the corner—everything was so convenient in Manhattan!—bought four new ornaments at the local gift shop, wrapped the base of the tree in an old white sheet, and set up a crèche nestled into the folds. There sat Mary and Joseph, five sheep, the baby Jesus in the manger, the three wise men, and right above the scene, on the lowest branch of the tree, the carefully hung Star of David. And every year, James looked at the crèche and shook his head.

  Then there were the traditional family outings. They had to go skating at the Wollman rink (“I’m going to hug you, Sammy,” Mindy said, chasing after him on her skates and embarrassing the hell out of him while James clung to the boards on the side) and to The Nutcracker at the New York City Ballet. Sam had been trying to get out of the performance for the past three years, claiming he was too old, but Mindy wouldn’t hear of it. When the tree grew onstage and the scenery changed to a fantasy woodland glade complete with snow, she even cried. Sam slunk down in his seat, but there was nothing he could do about it. After the performance, they went to Shun Lee West, where Mindy insisted on behaving like a tourist by admiring the sixty-foot-long gold papier-mâché dragon that had been transported to Manhattan in pieces in the late seventies. She ordered a dish called “Ants Climb on Tree,” which was only beef with broccoli. But—she reminded James and Sam—she couldn’t resist the name.

  This year was like every other year, with one small difference: Sam had a secret.

  Through a chance remark by Roberto, the doorman, Mindy discovered that Sam had gone up to the Rices’ apartment just before Christmas to help Annalisa with her computer. Normally, Sam discussed such incidents with her, but Christmas came and went without a peep from Sam. This was odd, and Mindy discussed it with James. “Why would he lie?” she asked.

  “He hasn’t lied. He’s omitted to tell you. There’s a difference,” James said.

  During the meal at Shun Lee West, Mindy decided the omission had gone on long enough. “Sam?” she said. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  Sam looked briefly alarmed. He immediately guessed what Mindy was getting at, and cursed himself for not having told Roberto to keep it to himself. Everyone in One Fifth was so damn nosy. Why couldn’t they all mind their own business? “Nope,” Sam said, stuffing his mouth with a shrimp dumpling.

  “Roberto said you went up to the Rices’ apartment before Christmas.”

  “Oh, that,” Sam said. “Yeah. That lady, what’s-her-name, couldn’t turn on her computer.”

  “Please don’t call women ‘that lady,’” Mindy said. “Always call women ‘women.’”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “That woman was having trouble with her Internet connection.”

  Mindy ignored the sarcasm. “Is that all?”

  “Yes,” Sam said. “I swear.”

  “I want to hear all about it,” Mindy said. “If there’s anything new or different in that apartment, I need to know.”

  “There’s nothing different.” Sam shrugged. “It’s just an apartment.”

  Sam hadn’t told Mindy about his visit for one simple reason: He still hadn’t learned how to lie effectively to his mother. Eventually, she would get it out of him that Annalisa Rice had given him the keys, and then Mindy would insist he turn the keys over to her, and she would sneak into the apartment.

  That was exactly what happened. “Sam?” Mindy said slyly when they were back home. “What are you hiding?”

  “Nothing,” Sam said.

  “Why are you acting so strangely?” Mindy said. “You saw something. And Annalisa Rice told you not to tell me. What is it?”

  “Nothing. She just gave me her keys, is all,” he blurted out.

  “Give them to me,” Mindy demanded.

  “No,” Sam said. “She gave the keys to me, not you. If she’d wanted you to have the keys, she would have given them to you.”

  Mindy put the issue aside until the next morning, when she started in on him again. “As the head of the board, it’s my duty to make sure there isn’t anything untoward going on in that apartment.”

  “Untoward?” James said, looking up from his cereal. “The only untoward element in this building is you.”

  “Besides, they have a housekeeper. She’s probably in the apartment,” Sam said.

  “She’s away. Went back to Ireland for the holidays,” Mindy said. “Roberto told me.”

  “It’s a good thing Roberto doesn’t work for national security,” James remarked.

  “Are you going to help me, James?” Mindy said.

  “No, I’m not. I refuse to engage in illegal activities. Sam,” James said, “give your mother the keys. There won’t be any peace in this house until you do.”

  Sam reluctantly turned over the keys. At which point Mindy immediately boarded the elevator for the penthouse apartment.

  Riding up, she recalled with a pang of envy how she’d never been one of the anointed few who’d been invited to Mrs. Houghton’s apartment for tea, or even to her annual Christmas party. Despite Mindy’s position in the building, Mrs. Houghton had largely ignored her—although, to be fair, when the Gooches moved in, Mrs. Houghton was nearly ninety and mostly housebound. But every now and then, she would descend from above like an angel (or perhaps like one of the Greek goddesses) to walk amongst regular humans. She would ride down in the elevator in her sable wrap, diamonds and pearls slung around her neck—it being rumored that she always wore real jewelry, so confident was she in her fame and reputation as to never worry about being mugged—standing erect on her rickety old legs like a determined general. The nurse or housekeeper would call down ahead to alert the doormen that Her Majesty was “coming down,” and when the elevator doors opened in the lobby, Mrs. Houghton would be greeted by at least two doormen, a handyman, and the super. “Can I help you, Mrs. Houghton?” the super would ask, offering his a
rm to walk her out to her ancient Cadillac limousine. On the occasions of Mrs. Houghton’s coming down, Mindy would do her best to be in the vicinity, and even though she refused on principle to bow or scrape to anyone, she found herself doing just that with Mrs. Houghton.

  “Mrs. Houghton?” she’d say meekly, shrinking her shoulders into a sort of bow. “I’m Mindy Gooch. I live here? I’m on the board?” And even though Mindy could tell Mrs. Houghton had no idea who she was, she never let on. “Yes, dear!” she’d exclaim, as if Mindy were a long-lost relative. She’d touch Mindy on the wrist. “How are you?” But the brief exchange never evolved into a conversation. And before Mindy could think of what to say next, Mrs. Houghton had moved on to one of the doormen.

  And now, instead of the gracious Mrs. Houghton in the building, they had the despicable Paul Rice. Mindy had admitted him to the building; therefore, she reasoned, she had every right to sneak into his apartment. Paul Rice was probably engaging in illegal and nefarious activities. It was her duty to protect the other residents.

  She had a hard time with the keys, which were electronic, in itself a possible violation of a building rule. When the door finally opened, she nearly fell into the foyer. Mindy wasn’t into art (“You can’t be into everything in this city, otherwise you have no time for accomplishments” was something she’d written recently in her blog), and so she barely noticed the lesbian photograph. In the living room, sparsely furnished, either on purpose or because they were still decorating, a freestanding mobile with papier-mâché renderings of cars blocked the view of the fireplace. Kids’ stuff, Mindy thought with disdain, and went into the kitchen. Here again she was disappointed. It was just another high-end kitchen with marble countertops and restaurant-quality appliances. She peeked into the maid’s room. Another bland pro-forma room with a single bed and a flat-screen TV. The bed had a profusion of pillows and a down comforter, and lifting up the corner, Mindy saw the sheets were from Pratesi. This was slightly irritating. These people really know how to waste money, she thought. She and James had had the same sheets for ten years, purchased on discount at Bloomingdale’s. Mindy went upstairs. She passed two bedrooms—empty—and a bathroom. She continued down the hall and went into Annalisa’s office. On top of a bookcase were several framed photographs, possibly the only personal items in the apartment. There was a large, schmaltzy photograph of Annalisa and Paul on their wedding day. Paul was wearing a tux and was leaner than he was now. Annalisa wore a small beaded tiara from which extended a lace veil. They looked happy, but who didn’t on their wedding day? There were also some snapshots of Paul and Annalisa at a birthday party wearing paper cones on their heads; a photograph of Paul and Annalisa with what appeared to be her parents in front of a town house in Georgetown; Paul in a kayak; Annalisa on the Spanish Steps in Rome. All so disappointingly normal, Mindy thought.