The Ballad of West Tenth Street

by Marjorie Kernan

  “Really, Ed, don’t be such an ass,” Sadie said. “All I’m proposing is that we let him rest up here a few days until you get the tests done, and you do something about that gash on his head and pump whatever into him. Really, you are the attending physician now, what state is your conscience in? You’re really willing to send him into the maw of the dependent medical system?”

  “Well, since he seems a particular friend of yours…but if I decide he needs hospitalization that’s exactly where he’s going, no arguments. Hamish, come hold a light for me so I can suture the wound.”

  “I’ll give him a bit of a sponging, when you’re done,” Sadie said, rather faintly.

  “No you won’t, Hamish and I will, won’t we my boy?” He clapped a hand on Hamish’s shoulder and grinned down at him ghoulishly. “Splendid opportunity for a young man to learn what poor diet and hygiene can do to the human body. What you can do, Sadie, since I’m clearly going to forfeit my dinner reservation, is cook one of your ghastly dinners, for my sins.”

  Hamish started to speak but just then caught Sadie’s eye as he looked back. She put a finger over her lips and winked.

  Yes, thank you,” Ed said later when Deen offered him more bread. He used it to mop up the last speck of sauce on his plate. Then he leaned back to light a cigarette.

  “It would be grotesque to even suppose for a moment that you cooked that dinner, Sadie. Is anyone going to let me in on the joke?”

  “I cooked it,” Hamish said. “Munster just heated it up.”

  “Really.”

  “Ettie’s been teaching me how to cook.”

  “And who is this wondrous creature?”

  When Ed ate, he ate, and when he wished to talk, he drank claret. Sadie refilled his glass as the children launched into the story of Ettie, the colonel, Robert the boiler man, and the plan to put out food for the Cap’n.

  Ed’s long, sardonic face showed what passed for pleasure, his dark brows twisting and his mouth turning down to show yellow eye-teeth. For a splinter of time he imagined that this was his house, and these people his family around him, then quickly dismissed such foolishness.

  18

  Ettie smiled, yes, here was Jaimes to tell her of his dinner, such a good boy to come to tell her right away the next morning. “Your family, yes they were surprised?” she asked him.

  “Oh,” Hamish said, stopping. “Yes, everyone really liked it. And a friend of Munster’s was there too, and he’s this really cranky doctor who goes to all the fancy restaurants alone because he says talking spoils a good dinner. He had seconds of everything.”

  “This is true? A doctor?”

  “Yes, and Ettie? I have really good news, we found the Cap’n. That’s why the doctor was there, the Cap’n’s sick. He’s sleeping in the kitchen and Dr. Ed’s going to fix him all up.”

  Ettie sat down on her chair with a bump. She stared, her mouth agape, then put her face in her hands and cried.

  “Hey, Ettie, he’ll be okay,” Hamish said, wishing she wouldn’t cry.

  “I cry like an old grandmother,” she laughed, wiping her eyes. “Quick, I must talk to your mother, okay? I made breakfast for you just like the colonel’s, it’s in the oven. You eat, yes?”

  Hamish didn’t answer. He’d opened the oven door and was too deeply absorbed in the wonders before him. A stack of toasted sourdough bread soaked with butter. A heap of bacon, thick and browned. Shirred eggs with cheese, their mound dusted with pepper and paprika. Grated potato pancakes. Muffins. He never even heard the door close as Ettie went out.

  Mees?” Ettie said, tapping on the area door. She stuck her head around as Sadie waved her in. Sshh, Sadie hissed to her, pointing to the back, where the Cap’n lay sleeping.

  Sadie beckoned Ettie in and made her way quietly to the espresso machine, pouring Ettie a cup. “He could probably sleep through a nuclear attack at the moment,” she said. “But I’m keeping that end of the kitchen a low noise area. Here, sit down.” Sadie was still in her peacock silk dressing gown, her hair a tangled bird’s nest. She picked up her coffee and took a long sip.

  Then she looked up, startled, at Ettie. “Gawd, that dinner! Ettie, Hames can cook. I mean, I’m sure you ever so tactfully coached him every step of the way, but he told me that he really stood at the stove and did the cooking. You’re an angel to spend so much time with him, I’m sure he must bore you to death and get muddy footprints all over your kitchen and wolf down everything in sight. But I think you’ve given him something really important.”

  “It’s good he’s still only twelve,” Ettie said. “When he’s older, not so easy. Now, he likes me and I can talk to him. Show him things.”

  “Do you have family here?”

  “A cousin. She’s got two boys and they don’t listen to me ever. They want me to bring them videos and games, always these kinds of toys. Mees, I cook all day for one old man. This is good, I love my job. But I got plenty of time to cook for other people too. Him over there, I could do all the cooking for him too. Soups and things, baby foods. Tell me, Yes, Ettie, you may do this?”

  Sadie looked at Ettie’s face for a moment. She must be only in her mid-thirties, she thought. With a face like a girl from the mountaintops, one made for hardship and thinner air, with wide, blooming cheeks. And a heart like a quivering satin valentine, beating on her sleeve.

  “He’ll think he’s died and gone to heaven,” she warned her.

  Dr. Ed, punctilious in all medical matters, whether a bum on a futon or a double-blind study, arrived at the end of the day. He nodded to Sadie then went to the Cap’n, waking him up by shaking his shoulder.

  “Hello,” Ed said.

  “’Lo,” the Cap’n said.

  Ed took his pulse “Feeling better? You have diabetes. Entirely treatable. Presently we’ll discuss treatment, but for now I’m going to give you this.” He drew a hypodermic from his bag, filled it from a vial and injected the Cap’n’s arm. “Feel you could get up to use the facilities?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good man. We’ll put this on you, I’ll hold it up, mustn’t shock the ladies.” Ed held out a brown wool bathrobe he’d brought, screening the half-clad Cap’n, then helped him put it on. He held his arm as the Cap’n walked to the bathroom door. “I brought you these too, you could put them on in there,” he said, handing him a pair of cotton pajamas.

  When the Cap’n came out, he helped him back into bed and straightened the covers over him. The Cap’n looked up at him, his eyes puzzled. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  Titus lay quietly in his basket by the Cap’n’s head, his eyes also watching Ed’s every move.

  “Well, you are here. May I?” Ed asked the Cap’n, touching the cat’s head. The Cap’n nodded. Ed patted the cat, giving him a thorough physical exam. “A fine, strong fellow,” he said when he’d finished. “Sleep as much as you can, in a couple of days we’ll have a chat about your treatment.”

  Ed strode to the kitchen sink and washed his hands. Sadie handed him a clean tea towel. She’d already uncorked one of his reserved bottles, an ’85 Mercury. They sat down at the table.

  “Your friend there is in surprisingly good health, overall. A spot of type 2 diabetes is all. Otherwise commendably robust. I’d hazard he’d been through a rough patch, and that, combined with a lack of insulin, brought him low, then some less than friendly type gave him a beating, of course. I’ll leave you some pills for him, and of course you know how to give injections. Hamish home this evening?”

  “He is, but I’m afraid he didn’t do any cooking, he and Deen spent all morning getting the Cap’n settled in.”

  “Hmm, pity.”

  A finger tapped at the area door. It was Ettie, holding a large pot in one arm and a cooler in the other. Sadie took the cooler and said, “Ettie, this is Ed Portman, the doctor who’s taking care of the Cap’n. Ed, this is Ettie Salvatore, the one who’s teaching Hames to cook.”

  Ed rose and bowed over her hand. “I’m honored,”
he said.

  “A doctor,” Ettie breathed. Then she fled, her cheeks flamingo red. “Mees, this pot is duck broth with lots of vegetables. And here are carrots in wine with onions, rice with herbs, duck cutlets with sauce, spinach with cheese, some little cakes. Everything to heat up in the stove, I marked the numbers, temperature, and minutes on each.” Then she turned around to look once more at the doctor, fascinated. Ed grinned at her, at which she grabbed the empty cooler and ran, taking one last amazed, terrified look at him before she went out the door.

  Ed rubbed his hands together. “I’m beginning to rather like this case,” he said. “There are certain possibilities to it.”

  Brenda, when she arrived the next morning, was not entranced to find an old, fat bum ensconced on a mattress in her kitchen. Sadie had explained the situation to her. Well, she’d listened hadn’t she? Never said a word.

  “Bad enough I got to slave like this for my boy,” she muttered as she gathered her arsenal of rags, Windex, and sponges. “But now I got to sweep around that old barge?” She flapped a rag at the Cap’n, who put his hands together and bowed his head to her.

  “Sure, go on, act like you’re all nice as pie. Act like the king of Egyptland if you want to. It don’t fool me. You’re nothing but what the cat dragged in, and you’re clogging up my floor.”

  When she stumped upstairs, Sadie was standing at the French doors, looking out at the garden. “The leaves are all gone,” she said.

  “Well, sometimes it’s a good thing when things are gone. Why you want some old bum clogging up your floor down there, Sadie? I know those children of yours can wrap you around their little fingers like wire, but that old man’s just trouble. Why don’t you send him to the state hospital, where he belongs? And how am I supposed to clean that floor with him lying on it?”

  “Brenda, you know that kitchen floor hadn’t been cleaned and waxed for years until you arrived, it was an absolute disgrace. I’m sure it’ll survive just this once without a mopping. I’m sorry, I know it’s a bit odd to have a bum down there, but if a man stumbles onto a porch, sick and injured, would you send him away?”

  “You’re talking country matters. I don’t see any porches around here.”

  “Just my point.”

  “Well, it’s your kitchen I guess. He able to get up and use the john?”

  “He is. Ah, now I see—Brenda, I promise you, I would never ask you to clean up after him. Leave the kitchen loo to me, banish it from your mind.”

  “I will not,” Brenda said, standing taller. “I clean this house, don’t I? Even that old bum’s bathroom.”

  “Funny how we all think of him as old,” Sadie said, speaking more to herself. “I imagine he’s not much older than me. In any case, let’s compromise, Brenda, have the children clean it. They brought him here and he’s their friend. That’s fair, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, it might be just the thing. Show those youngsters the errors of their ways. That it’s one thing to ask everybody over, another thing to clean up after them. And I did poke my head around the door, just to make sure, and he seems neat around his person. And that cat of his? That’s one of the cleanest, shiniest cats I ever did see. Kind of homey to look at, the way it lies there, never leaving his side.”

  Oh, you old fraud, Sadie thought as Brenda went upstairs. That cat’s gotten to you too, hasn’t it?

  Hamish and Deen tidied up the Cap’n’s bed and saw to his needs, giving him what food he could take at first, and telling him how they’d all looked and looked for him. As his strength returned Deen gave him some shampoo and he got up shakily to give his hair and beard a good wash. When he got back into bed he thanked Deen and said he felt much better. But he was dispirited. He felt he had no right to be in such a fine house, troubling so many people.

  “Munster’s reading to him,” Deen told the colonel. They were sitting by the fire and eating tea sandwiches rather thoughtfully. Deen had fallen into the habit of sharing tea with the colonel most afternoons, before she practiced. It was getting dark well before six now and nowhere seemed to ward off the onset of winter more than the colonel’s back parlor. And he didn’t seem to mind at all if they fell into long silences, was more comfortable a person to be around than anyone.

  “Is she? And what book did she choose?”

  “David Copperfield. She reads that to everyone when they’re sick.”

  “Ah, very sensible. Imagine she reads well?”

  “Well, she does actually. Gives the characters sort of special voices.”

  “Your wandering friend must think he’s been transported to Eden.”

  Deen took another chicken salad sandwich and bit into it. She liked all the others but the chicken salad ones were the best. “You see, he does and still, he keeps saying he’s got to leave, that it’s wrong of him to be bothering us. He used to always have a big smile and so we didn’t worry about him, but well…he was crying. He turned his back, but I’m sure he was. Colonel, isn’t there a place he could go, have to himself and a windowsill for Titus to sit in? I don’t think he wants to wander anymore.”

  The colonel sighed. “I don’t know. But tell you what, I’ll ask the inestimable Mrs. de Angelo to look into the matter. Yes, we’ll sic her on the answer. A most remarkable woman. Why, she’ll have it all sorted out in no time.”

  Deen, glad to dispense with gloomy thoughts, turned to a happier one. “How do you happen to have a concert piano?” she said. “Hardly anyone does.”

  “No, and it was the wonder of the entire county. Belonged to my aunt Belinda. Conventional opinion was that she was a dreadful show-off for having it. Still, it was far and away her greatest pleasure. She played well, might’ve been even better, but from time to time a true musician made their way to her drawing room. You see, she had it so that she could hear it played, not out of vainglory at all. She was the only woman in my family who was ever kind to me, so when I decided to settle down I had it gone over, in the hopes that I, too, might some day have a real musician come to visit. Never knew I’d land slap up against a talent such as yours, my dear. Fact is, I never knew such happiness.” The colonel reached out and patted the arm of Deen’s chair, missing her hand.

  The Angry One ran helter from one street corner, skelter to the next. Where was his fat old Thanksgiving turkey? The one he ached and whistled to carve? Him and his damn tabby cat?

  Angry Ones don’t have homes or snapshots. Rage is their memento. They aren’t asked to share a drop of wine and tell stories round the fire. They don’t have stories. They are humans stripped of flesh. They aren’t real to themselves, the places they walk are perpetually strange to them. They hide among us, for we choose not to see them. They hide under a child’s bed holding their breath, waiting to poke a skinny arm out to grab a tiny ankle.

  The Angry One had been circling the city for days, throwing his head back and sniffing the air. He’d put the red eye on his quarry and flushed him from his hidey-holes. Now he will come to my arms.

  But he didn’t, and the Angry One got his paws on some hooch and poured his rage into the sky.

  “He will come unto me!” he shouted into the night. “As the little children also shall, so I sayeth. Man, what you lookin’ at? Go home and do what you do with your mamma. And yea, as I was sayin’—now I said get the hell outta here asshole, go home, take off your nine-hundred-dollar coat, hang it up all nice and neat, then go fuck your mother!

  “And lo, the house of Nem was lone and mournful. Yes, like a pimp with no bitches. That kind of house, women keenin’ and cryin’, swords lyin’ rusty all over the yard. Then a holy man with a crown of fire comes walkin’ up to the gate, says, why are all your swords rusty? Why are your women cryin’? What the fuck’s goin’ on here?”

  He lit a page of the Post he scooped from the sidewalk, blew on it, and sent it aloft. It rose then wafted over the avenue, moving delicately in the currents.

  “I don’t know why ruin must come to some houses! But I suspect that someone ther
e did some wrong. And then, everybody pays. But I do know, and say thus unto all you motherfuckers, when I come ridin’ in your yard wearing a crown of flames, you honkies better scatter, run for some hole to hide in. Then I’ll sniff every last one of you out, dig you out with my fingernails!”

  As he walked up the wide avenue, his long coat stalking his heels, his face hooded, the other pedestrians subtly parted to leave him alone. Certainly none dared to look at him, or wished to see his face. Distance and unknowing were their prophylactic. If he hadn’t hated them all so much he might’ve cried, begged that someone, just once, look at him like he was their friend.

  19

  Ettie announced, “Meez D to see you,” to the colonel, who as usual was ensconced in his armchair by the fire. He’d been listening to Scarlatti.

  “Ah, my dear Mrs. de Angelo,” he said, aiming the remote at the CD player to turn it off. “Impeccable timing, as always. Do sit down, have a drink.”

  “No thanks. I had to go right to bed that last time, and the next day was a total write-off. I needed a steam bath, a massage, and a facial before I could even face going out that evening.”

  “My dear, I am so sorry. I had no intention of making you unwell. You must forgive an old southerner his antiquated ways. Do tuck the costs of the beauticians into the accounts.”

  “It’s all right. I hadn’t taken a day off since God knows when. Now, I’ve just had a word with Robert and seen the new heating system, it all looks fine. He says he has a few details to finish but otherwise the job’s done. I’ve paid half his bill from your household account and will send him the other half next week. We have to be quite sure it’s working before we pay the rest. I explained that to him and he agreed. I’ll tell him to clean up and let himself out, shall I?”