The Ballad of West Tenth Street

by Marjorie Kernan

  “I can’t do nothing about cigarette burns,” she was saying. “About the follies of mankind when they’re drunk….”

  “Brenda, what’s the matter?” Sadie said.

  “Nothing. Those came for you.” She pointed to a bunch of cream roses, dozens of them in a ring of fern, and bound into a white lace paper cone.

  Sadie picked it up. “Gawd, I feel like a virgin. Look, it’s from that wonderful old lunatic next door. I’m invited to tea. Where are the children?”

  “With that lunatic. And my boy, Liall, too. You’re just fooling, right, that old man’s not really a lunatic?”

  “Of course not. I use it as a term of endearment.”

  “Well, it’s nearly time for me and Liall to go home. And as far as special projects go, today I took some elbow grease to the washer and drier and all, back of the kitchen. Somebody spilled an awful lot of detergent around those things, then let it build up into a sort of cement. But what am I going to do, go over there and say, my boy Liall’s got to go home now?”

  “You could let him spend the night with us. I’ll bring him home in the car tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s just one more bother to you.”

  “Not a bit of it. Someday I’ll tell you all about Gretchen, and then you’ll understand why it’s so nice to see those two boys doing normal things like playing guitar and having tea with old lunatics.”

  “I already think I know a bit.”

  “You probably know it all, Brenda.”

  “Yes, and it’s a world of trouble we’re born into. Sometimes I think we took to Jesus dying on a cross because we all do, a little bit every day, and that’s a fact. And I can’t do nothing with these cigarette burns. Some real nice furniture and someone set a cigarette down on it and just walked away. It’s a wonder you and your family weren’t burnt to a crisp.”

  Still muttering about the slow crucifixion of mankind on this earth, Brenda went downstairs to get her coat. She hadn’t really expected to hear herself say yes to Liall’s staying over, but thought herself a better judge of character than most people, and though Sadie liked to pretend to be a holy terror and drank like a fish, she was awfully good to the children.

  Sadie dashed on a bit of lipstick in front of the hall mirror then went to the colonel’s. “Hello, Ettie,” she said to the woman who opened the door. “Are my children eating everything in sight?”

  Ettie and Sadie had become acquainted some days earlier, when Sadie had introduced herself. Ettie had been struggling to move a heavy box down the area steps to her kitchen. Sadie had found the sight of a diminutive woman wrestling with a box larger and heavier than herself appalling. Bloody deliverymen, she’d thought, grabbing one end.

  She’d made a friend for life, something not difficult to do in the lexicon of Ettie Salvatore, for Ettie loved people. And she knew so few. She needed to love many more, and so she cut pictures from magazines of people with faces she liked, nice people, and hoarded them, to keep and run a touch over their nice faces. Ettie had been watching the Hollanders for weeks and had entirely embraced them in her mind. Sadie she particularly respected for being a widow true to her dead husband, one who’d never remarried and who, one could see, put her children first, a fine boy and girl, and the other one who was a ghost. So what if she spent a night or two with that young blondie? Her heart, when it came to her one true love, the father of her children, it still had cords and chains all around it. With the sacred lamp ever burning in the center. And you could tell she wasn’t one of those landowner sorts who never saw anyone beneath them, no, she was a true lady, she helped people struggling with boxes.

  Thankfully, all these thoughts had already been through Ettie’s mind and there is no reason to suppose that the two stood in the colonel’s doorway while they passed. Instead, Ettie said, “Mees, the little ones are in back. I show you.”

  “My dear, now my cup truly runneth over. I’ve saved the chair next to mine for you, while I’ve been interrogating the youngsters.” The colonel patted the arm of the chair. “They’ve been most fascinating company. Would you be so kind and pour now, Deen’s been an awfully good sport about it, but we’ve all been awaiting your deft touch.

  “How especially fetching you look today, in that color. And I must say, your children are charming company. Their Scottish friend I think wise beyond his years. Do have some tiny cakes, and some of Ettie’s famous sandwiches.”

  “My God,” Sadie said, looking over the food, “fit for a bloody great country house tea. Say, Colonel, does your largesse run to a slug of something in my tea?”

  “How thoughtless of me. As the widow of a fallen idol of the stage, you must, of course, um…please, dear lady, tell me your preferred drink.”

  “Vodka, but it doesn’t go with tea. So a dollop of scotch if you have some?”

  “Would Oban do?”

  “Would it. I’m beginning to like you, Colonel.”

  The colonel rang for Ettie and said, “Ettie, would you be so kind as to unlock the sideboard and get out a bottle called Oban? O-B-A-N. And a bottle of my bourbon, please.” He took a key from his waistcoat pocket and gave it to her.

  The colonel was not unaware that the party had taken on a decidedly grown-up flavor and that children are restless creatures, especially when grown-ups get to drinking and nattering. “Perhaps Deen, you’d like to try the piano?” he said. “And would you young fellows like to explore the garden, or visit Ettie in the kitchen?” They were all off in a flash.

  “Ah,” the colonel sighed as Ettie put the two bottles on the table. When Sadie had adjusted their cups of tea to something with more kick in them he sat back. “Simply grand. Wonderful to hear the clock chime five and sit back in good company with a slug of whiskey.

  “I was educated at Harvard. All we Harringtons were; it was our custom to go north, study with our Yankee brethren. Of course, there were occasionally certain sons who were not quite Harvard material, in that case a younger son or even a cousin, went in his place. I decided I should like to become a doctor and took the necessary courses in the hard sciences. I hoped one day to be a very much wiser man than I am now, to perhaps devote my life to the suffering of the poor in other countries. I fear I did not carry on with my medical studies. I did though, eventually become acquainted with the work of Mr. C. G. Jung, made quite a study of his ideas. Must admit though, I frittered my life away, drinking whiskey and ruminating on the protomythian, the nature of dreams and the collective unconscious.”

  “Did you ever go through a Jungian analysis?” Sadie asked. “Figure out your anima and animus?”

  “Yes, my greatest years were spent with Herr Schafflin. I had a fascination with attics, in fact thought I was imprisoned in one for a long time. I could describe it now in great detail. With him I explored the entire cast of characters that had shaped me, and yes, the male and female elements of my being. My fixation with the towering carved bed I was born in, became, if not understood, at least realized.

  “I never married. Knew just what sort of girl I admired and even later why, but it never came to pass. Do have some more, my dear, let’s switch to straight whiskey and skip the tea, shall we? Thank you. Cheers. The carved bed was swagged in chains of roses. Inside the curled petals of each rose was a face, that of a monkey. I don’t think the bed actually exists, though I have looked for it. I long to see it though, because I’ve an idea that the monkey’s face is actually that of God’s.”

  Hey, got a light?” Steve asked Sadie in bed a few nights later. He sat back on the pillows and took a long hit off a joint, then passed it to her.

  “That was pretty fucking amazing,” he said.

  Sadie, already stoned as hell, heard his words clanging on and on in her head, beneath them another voice of her own chanted, Does he really have to say such awful things? Shit, she thought, I hate it when that basso profundo voice weighs in.

  “You know,” Steve said, wrapping his arms up over the back of the pillow, the joint in his mouth.
“The stone business sucks these days. You got all these little guys from South America standing at intersections, willing to do stone work for eight bucks an hour. And they’ve like, lived and breathed rocks for twenty generations. Gotta give the fuckers their due, they know their rocks. And strong? I saw this one shrimp pick up a rock that stood to his knees and just walk it across a yard like it was a baby. But they’re too fucking cheap! Hey, got any more of that red wine?”

  Sadie stroked his chest, only half listening. She reached out and poured herself a vodka. She’d brought up a glass with lots of ice in it, rather craftily, she thought. It was the third time she’d spent a night with Steve and she found that she needed it—he was one of those people that got garrulous while high, even after sex. In fact, the bass voice said in her head, he’s a bloody chatterbox. She took another sip of vodka.

  “The thing is,” he went on relentlessly, “the housewives don’t like being left alone in their eighty-five-hundred-square-foot houses, with these Marielitos churning up the soil outside their windows and leering at them. Fuck straight, if I were a dame, I wouldn’t either. Those little guys, all they can think about is popping some blond American pussy. Here, put this in the ashtray, I’ll roll a new one. You know what’s funny? It’s this, it’s all a matter of like, the food chain. It makes me laugh. Half the time I’m out there sweating, moving stones around and the same housewives are coming out every fifteen minutes, you want some iced tea and lemonade? You want a cold towel? You want me to run your clothes through the washer? While I suck you off? They’re so fucking horny. And so obvious. Married to some fat dickwad who waddles off to the eight fifteen every morning, bye, honey. I feel like a piece of fucking meat when their eyes slather all over me. And I got some pride you know, never bang ’em.”

  Sadie waved her hand, saying no thanks to another hit. “I think the Marielitos were Cuban, actually. But you’re right about the food chain part,” she said. “I used to be the young woman in one of the snarlier, bloodier parts of it. Though all I did was see teeth gnashing shut around me, Ree made sure of that.”

  “He screw around on you?”

  “Oh, I suppose a bit, nothing serious.”

  “But expected you to keep clean, right? Hey, you ever meet Alice Cooper? Really? He’s my hero. Do you know why he called himself Alice? That’s always bugged me like hell. Was he a fag?”

  “If I were a tall, hairy guy and had a voice like a bucket of live coals, I’d call myself Alice,” Sadie said, dreamily.

  “You want some more vodka?”

  “Please. I’m not quite drunk enough yet to fall asleep.”

  “You call that sleep? I call it passed out. You got to be careful about never smoking in bed, okay? At least, if I’m not here. It’s one thing if you fry yourself to a crisp, but it’s those kids of yours I’m thinking about. Teenagers sleep hard too, like drunks. I tell you what, I’m going to install hard-wired smoke detectors in this place for you. It’ll cost you a couple hundred but I’ll do the work for free. I’ll use hotel-grade ones. Hotels hate to have their guests burn up.”

  11

  Hamish was beginning to grow and was very often ravenously hungry. His mother’s nonchalant attitude toward food meant there was usually little for him to eat in the fridge, though he opened the door often, staring hopelessly at its contents and sighing.

  His weekly allowance, a sum adequate for his needs but in no way princely, gave him just enough for a hot dog here and there, which he’d wolf down, longing for five more.

  Being an intelligent boy, he decided he’d become quite fond of Ettie, and began watching her movements with a lively interest. It’s not that he stalked her exactly, but he did become familiar with her routine. Two days after the tea at the colonel’s he saw his chance and struck. Ettie was leaving Balducci’s, her cart full and a bulging shopping bag in one hand. He offered to carry the bag for her, which she handed him, blushing with pleasure.

  Since that day bliss had come into Hamish’s life. In the form of leftover fried chicken, beef bourguignon, oyster stew, ginger cookies, and Ettie’s specialty, grilled cheese sandwiches. These were not any grilled cheese sandwiches, these were thick slices of sourdough bread with Gruyère and tomato, browned in clarified butter. She’d make two for him while she got the colonel’s dinner ready, her heart full to have his company as she worked. They talked as Ettie cooked and Hamish ate, both of them highly interested in the workings of their respective households.

  One day Hamish told Ettie about the old bum who’d done him a kindness. “Munster gives him money regular,” he explained. “And we do too, I mean a little bit. But I saw him yesterday and I had only a dollar. He looked kind of hungry. He’s pretty fat, so his stomach must ache and ache when its empty. And then there’s his cat, Titus, he’s got to feed him too.”

  Ettie took this very much to heart. Upstairs that night in her top-floor room, watching a video her sister had sent from Guatemala, she could barely concentrate on who was in love with who. She felt it a terrible thing that a kind man was hungry, for he must be very kind and good if the boy liked him so, such a good boy as Jaimes. Switching off the set she sat in her armchair and squeezed her eyes shut to think. Yes, she would ask the colonel. He would know what to do. But you can’t just ask him to feed every bum in the city, especially some bum she’d never seen. No, it was clear, she must go and find this bum and speak to him herself first.

  So the next afternoon, after the colonel’s lunch, she set out for the park. She had a five-dollar bill in her coat pocket and a shopping bag with some sandwiches she’d prepared. And in another packet, a mash of chicken and rice, for his cat. She’d thought carefully and had decided that pure meat might be too much for the stomach of a city cat, one owned by a bum. It might gobble it down, then throw it right up.

  That evening, when Ettie put out the colonel’s drink tray before dinner, the hour when he was most receptive to requests, she’d discovered, she said, “Um?”

  “Yes, my dear? I know what your ‘ums’ signify. What is it? You need to order a side of beef for that boy? Go right ahead, it gives me such pleasure to hear what he packs away each afternoon.”

  “Well, he knows this old man. A good man, who has no home. One time, this old man was very good to Jaimes and Miss Deen, he scared away a bad man who was trying to hurt them. This is brave I think. This old man, he has a good and clean cat he keeps in his coat pocket, it’s a very big pocket, but he has to hide his cat because there are so many bad people in this world. I say, Ettie, go see this man and talk with him, so I do, today. Then ask the colonel what to do.”

  “Hmm. Describe his face to me,” the colonel said, refilling his glass.

  “Big, like old stone that’s been out in the weather, long gray hair. With old blue eyes and face hairs, like his cat’s. He looked at me like a boy whose mother comes to pat his head, when I gave him food.”

  “Oh,” the colonel said. “And was he very hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, let me think about it a bit, will you?”

  In the end, the colonel called in Mrs. de Angelo. Now there was a woman, he thought, who could solve any problem. He explained to her that he had a rather special project that needed her delicacy and intellect, and that she should bill him for whatever fee she thought appropriate.

  Mrs. de Angelo arrived the next afternoon, listened carefully to what the colonel had to say, then ate several tea sandwiches while she thought.

  “Well, you already have me on retainer to oversee things,” she said at last. “So I’ll just bill you for the extra hours, and perhaps a fee for the design work. First thing is, a place to leave him food. The difficulty is that a bum can’t be seen loitering, or worse, possibly intent to B and E.”

  “A term whose origins I do not understand, dear lady.”

  “Breaking and entering.”

  “Ah.”

  “So what we’ve got to do is devise a place to stash the food that looks so ordinary that everyone
passes it by without a thought, but that your bum can open without attracting suspicion. It’ll have to be something at waist height…. Hmm, the front steps and area railing don’t really have any places that’re right…but the garden gate’s inset from the building. We could build the fence to the left of it out with a false front, make a hatch with a secret spring, your bum could look like he was just stopping to get his breath, and away he goes. And a hatch from the garden side, for Ettie to place the food in. I’ll have my carpenter over tomorrow to do the job. And tell Ettie to place the food in a shopping bag, ready to go.”

  “Most remarkable,” the colonel said. “Conceived, and sure to be executed, with military precision. Wish we’d had you in the war, would’ve gone a damn sight smoother. Now that our business is so admirably concluded, may I offer you a drink?”

  “No thanks, I never drink.”

  “Really? Not ever?”

  “It’s hell on the skin for a woman my age. I’ll have a sparkling water, though.”

  The colonel rang for Ettie rather sadly.

  Three days after Mrs. D’s visit to the colonel, her carpenter showed Ettie how the secret hatch in the false garden wall worked. Intrigued by the project, he went so far as to pretend several times to be a bum, walking down Tenth Street and drawing out a bag they’d placed in it.

  For her part, Ettie was ecstatic. She’d already planned a series of wholesome foods to give to the Cap’n and his cat. Things that would keep but still provide extra nourishment. The carpenter had even insulated and wired a heat pad to the base of the hatch, saying, “It’s gonna be no good to the old guy if it’s frozen.” Ettie had been so impressed by this foresight that she’d made him an apple cake to take home to his wife. One of her extra special ones with the burned sugar.

  The next afternoon she went to tell the Cap’n the news. He was not in the park. She made a sweep of the surrounding streets, but he was nowhere to be found. The next day she tried again. He wasn’t there. The following day she asked the colonel’s permission to take Jaimes along with her to search for him, leaving the colonel a cold dinner while they walked the streets into the now quick-fading light. She began to cry, as finally, she and Hamish gave up.