The Ballad of West Tenth Street

by Marjorie Kernan

  “Well,” the colonel said, “fact is, Robert and I have become quite chummy. You wouldn’t deny an old man some amusing company, would you? Thing is, he usually comes up for a drink about this time of day.”

  “It’s your house.”

  “I can see you don’t approve,” the colonel said sadly. “You won’t approve of my next project either, I’m afraid. Hesitate to ask, but might you accept another little commission from me? Think you’ll find it amusing, though I’m afraid you won’t think it a good idea at all.”

  “For what you pay me, I’m hardly likely to turn it down.”

  “You don’t take on these projects for even a tiny bit of liking?”

  “Oh, you are a terrible old charmer. Christ, give me a damn drink. I can’t stand sitting here watching you relish that bourbon, with that little smile on your face. And if your next project’s as mad as it sounds, I’ll need a drink just to hear about it.”

  “We’ll speak of it later,” the colonel said, hearing Robert’s tread in the hall.

  “Okeydoke, now that’s as sweet a boiler as I’ve ever done,” Robert said, coming in. “Hiya Mrs. D, how’s tricks? I’m here to swear before you, Colonel sir, that that system down there doesn’t have one single corner cut, is no union labor job spilling with sloppy work and miscalculations. Thanks, I will have a drink. Santé.

  “And just in time, you hear that wind, trying to tear the roof off? That one’s coming straight down from the Arctic Circle, tomorrow the Eskimos would feel right at home in this town. It sure is a night to be indoors, with some fine central heating and a glass of good sippin’ whiskey.”

  “Well, let’s have a refill and toast the completion of the project. To a most nonunion job!” the colonel said, raising his glass.

  “To hell with the pipefitters local number nothing!” Robert said.

  “Here’s to Botox,” Mrs. D said.

  “Ah,” the colonel sighed, taking a mighty sip. “Things could not be better. Still, there is, as there almost inevitably is, a sad element to the completion of things. I shall no longer have your company, Robert, of an evening.”

  “And I’ll bet you a bushelful of hundred dollar bills there won’t be any sippin’ whiskey on my next job. But say, Colonel? I got an idea. I kind of promised that kid next door I’d show her some more moves on the keys. But maybe you don’t think I should be messing with her training and all, that might be right. Though it just seems to me that she’s got a right to know what puts the jangle into the music. So I was thinking, maybe I could come over Thursdays, spend some time with that kid at the piano, then sort of stop in and pay my respects to you, like.”

  “I didn’t realize you were a pianist as well as a plumber,” Mrs. D said. Her tone conveyed a certain amount of skepticism.

  “Well I ain’t, and that’s a fact. Never was a pianist, and no pretty colors can paint it that I ever could read music or was going to play on some big stage. I played in barrooms and such. Juke joints. I was near to living in barrooms, couldn’t think but for the songs rolling through my head. Then I met a woman and married her, and well, I loved her enough to give up the barrooms and juke joints and get a trade, some steady work. She died, a long while ago, well, there you go. And now I’m too old for that kind of life. But there was this old man who taught me, see, he knew things about the piano. He’s been dead a long long time and it seemed to me I might pass on some of those things he showed me along to that young girl Deen.”

  Mrs. D was not so crisply businesslike that she’d entirely lost sight of her human soul. So she poured herself another slug of bourbon and expelled a breath from her chest. Thought, in fact, that it might be a kind of paradise here, by a wood fire, with an old madman and a plumber who drank music in his hidden heart. That she must be going mad to start liking her clients, and worse, caring about them.

  Thus was what the Hollander children later dubbed the Thursday Night Imbibers Club born. Without exactly planning it, Robert and Mrs. D forgathered by the colonel’s hearth each Thursday evening that winter, to drink and plot, talk of ways to improve the lot of the people in the twinned town houses, one of which the colonel had landed in as though a pod falling from a far planet. They ate Ettie’s sandwiches, sometimes holding one up to look at it in sheer wonder before they took another bite. They were the best and oddest of company, three people who on the surface had almost nothing in common.

  They always broke up early, at the reasonable hour of eight, when Robert would go out to stand at the corner of Bleecker to whistle up a taxi for Mrs. D. He’d jog back, hand her into it, then go back to sit with Ettie, doing whatever heavy work she had to get the colonel’s dinner ready and served. He sometimes, no, he often, felt hopeless, about how much older he was than Ettie, but she seemed to favor him, they went to four p.m. matinees of movies together and lately she’d let him hold her hand.

  Oh Ettie, oh Ettie, Robert thought as he trudged to the subway and his Brooklyn home. I’d like to know you well enough to touch my hand to your pretty pink cheek. I’d like to lean down to you and tell you this is the first anniversary of this day, and that day, and that time you rubbed my hands ’cause I was cold.

  Sitting at the yellow Formica table at home, he’d make himself stop having such thoughts, promise himself to stop making up such foolishness. He was resolute in his mind, but that other part of him was already lost.

  Sadie, visited by a rare interest in dinner, had made roast duck, a confit of onions and leeks in red wine, whipped potatoes and carrots, and pears poached with cinnamon and ginger for dessert. She’d gone over to tell Ettie of this sudden inspiration, and that Ettie needn’t bring them dinner. Ettie had looked somewhat disappointed, so Sadie explained that the cold temperatures made her long to cook a fall meal. In this she was being truthful, but so often truths have several layers. The layer below her first truth was that she was getting a bit miffed at being labeled a monstrously lousy cook. Or even a drunken slattern who swore and muttered to herself as she stirred a pot of foul gummage. And beneath that, like the butter that lines a cake pan, she was just a tiny bit jealous of Ettie.

  The dinner was a success. The pears were perhaps too well poached, in fact a touch burned, but that was simply due to the fact that Sadie, by then, was not very sober, as a result she didn’t care much about bloody pears. Hamish rescued them, adding a bit of water to the pan and serving them over vanilla ice cream.

  Deen had brought a tray with dinner for the Cap’n in his little encampment at the back of the kitchen, then stayed to chat with him as Sadie and Hames put the food on the table. She stroked Titus, who’d grown partial to letting Deen pick him up, swinging his orange-and-white-striped tail like a clock pendulum, and oozing over her shoulder.

  “He behaved terribly well when I brought him to meet the colonel,” she told him. “The colonel got the idea in his head that he wanted to meet Titus, and well, it had to happen, didn’t it? I guess rich old people are like that.” She mimicked the colonel’s accent and tone: “I say, what a very fine fellow. What color would you say he is? Marmalade? Yes, yes, a marmalade cat, I can just see the sun beams through the orange pulp in the jar.”

  “He asked if I’d let him sit on his lap. You won’t mind if I tell you Titus did, actually sort of sprawled on the colonel’s lap? He got fur all over his suit.”

  “Did he now?” the Cap’n said, smiling. “That cat really knows a right’ un from a wrong’ un. That’s the smartest cat that ever lived.”

  “Let’s see if he likes odds and sods of duck meat,” Sadie said, putting a saucer down by Titus’s water bowl.

  They watched as Titus marched around it, then poked at it with a paw. Satisfied it wouldn’t leap up to bite him, he neatly scarfed down the lot.

  After dinner Deen and Hamish helped Sadie up the stairs, pulling as needed, or shoving at her from behind. She swayed before her bed then flopped down on it. They covered her with the eiderdown, making sure her bare feet were under the covers, then snuck out.


  Hames clomped down to the kitchen to put the lights out. “Good night, Cap’n,” he called.

  “Eh, my dears, sleep well.” He sounded very nearly asleep.

  His voice had that chewy sound, Hamish thought, as he tried to make less noise with his feet going upstairs. He wasn’t very successful.

  The Cap’n woke just as a faint smudge of charcoal light came through the windows. For a few minutes he lingered in the bed, in the shelter of a house. Then he got up, willing his mind to regain the ability to do things for himself. He took a leak, then brushed his teeth and washed. He carefully rinsed the suds from the sink. He stowed his few things in his backpack and dressed.

  He surveyed the sauce-coated pots on the stove and the dishes on the table. First he stacked what he could in the dishwasher then set to scrubbing the rest. He wiped down the counters and table.

  He folded the blankets and sheets from his bed, piling them in a neat stack. He swept the floor and primed the coffeemaker. He found the things they liked for breakfast in the cupboards and set them out on a tray, with cups and plates. He put on his coat, bound up its straps, put Titus in his pocket, and let himself out into the area, where he climbed the steps to the street. Ah, the smell of the city at dawn, when the cold air captured pockets of diesel fumes. He walked away, turning once to salute the house and its occupants.

  20

  They say that beauty is not easily defined or agreed on, and that it is changeable according to fashion. But then again, there may be other possibilities. It might be that ever since man walked upright we have recognized certain elements of harmony, fitness, and grace in each other’s physiognomies that are universal and unchanging.

  Some say we define beauty through an innate instinct to choose the most profitable sets of genes and thereby further our species, but if that were so, why wouldn’t we find someone with large, curving teeth or webbed feet or a fine pair of hairy buttocks the more desirable mate?

  While our perception of beauty is both practical, in that we look for signs of health, strength, and sexual suitability, we also wish to distance ourselves from our common ancestors, that we exalt in those among us who look least like the wild creatures we once competed with for food. That there are no practical benefits in a graceful foot, calligraphic eyebrows, or hair the color of sunlight on a copse of beeches. Yet we weep over these things.

  True beauties, those rare creatures among us, are gaped at on the street. They are sidled up to, squawked at, and fought over. Their seduction is a prize, a leopard pelt to be worn as a boast. And they sometimes don’t have a very easy time of it. Some of them know their beauty and openly court these attentions, practicing gestures and striking poses, while others don’t particularly know or care.

  Gretchen was of the latter type. She honestly didn’t know why people stared at her and often wished they wouldn’t. But she looked just as one would imagine a fair princess in an old tale, an English beauty of slender delicacy with wide eyes the blue-green of a hidden pool. Her silvery blond hair flowed down her back, tucked behind the prettiest pair of ears one could hope to see, and her chin was ever so slightly pointed. Ree had called her Mab. It was his own name for her and he hadn’t liked anyone else to use it.

  Gretchen’s malaise had dampened her beauty, making her skin duller and putting shadows around her eyes, but at twenty-one there was nearly nothing that could hide her looks—she only appeared both downcast and achingly lovely. Because of this there were many people who were fonder of her and treated her with greater care than they might a plain girl. And then there were a few others who were maddened by it, finding reasons to dislike her, even if they had to make them up out of whole cloth.

  There are certain women with a malignancy of the soul, women who hate others of their sex because they are attractive. Nurse Peterson was of this unlovely tribe. Nurse Peterson and a band of lesser harpies she led secretly tormented Gretchen. Their crimes were made even more horrible by the fact that they knew Gretchen couldn’t speak of them.

  It was late, in that deep hour of the night when the day seems most remote. Gretchen lay in her bed, tense with fear. It was Mrs. Peterson’s night on duty, the night of pain. She heard sinister footsteps creaking, rubber on linoleum, and knew that pain was near.

  Peterson, who shall not be graced with a Christian name, looked around her before entering Gretchen’s room. She was excited, hoping she’d catch Gretchen doing something she wasn’t supposed to. Peterson liked to have an excuse, a jumping off point as it were, for torturing the girl. Since Gretchen didn’t speak and was generally a good girl, Peterson was often frustrated.

  But tonight Gretchen presented her with a veritable Christmas feast of wrongdoing, and her eyes grew wide as she took in its potential, not merely for an outburst of indignation and pinching right now, but wonderfully, for a full-blown hullabaloo in the morning. Gretchen had drawn on the wall. On the pristine white wall. One of those damn dogs, in shades of green. A trail of purple tears ran from its left eye.

  “Oh criminy, are you going to catch hell in the morning,” she hissed, leaning over Gretchen. “It’s going to be a real scene. Antisocial behavior, destruction of property, criminal mischief. And you had to do that disgusting dog. That hairy mutt. Even your doctor boyfriends won’t be able to help you this time.”

  She began pinching Gretchen hard, with every intent to cause as much pain as possible. But sneakily, in places where the girl had hurt her own flesh, leaving scars and discoloration. Gretchen lay utterly still, making no sound. When the dreadful woman had satisfied, or at least as much as she thought prudent to, her foul urges, she crept away.

  There is no question, even for one moment, that what the nurse did was anything less than unconscionably wrong. But the world is a strange place and sometimes good comes of evil. This continued mistreatment of Gretchen had created a new force inside her, in a place called the will, and in it she hated Peterson with a potent fervor. She thought about getting well so that she could kill the vicious besom, or at least bite off one of her red, ugly ears. In its odd way, life had placed Gretchen smack in the sights of a sadist, but a petty one, a nickel-and-dimer on the scale of human evil, who hurt her flesh just enough to cure her of wishing to hurt it herself.

  But still, lying there alone, with tears running down her face, Gretchen spent a terrible night. She cried for her mother, and for her sister and brother, and for her father, who she’d loved very much.

  Her tears fed on themselves, overwhelming her. She cried for her own fear and pain, then for the unhappiness everyone bears, feeling the weight of all that unhappiness welling up inside her. Each tear she cried was merely one of millions, a sea of tears, each drop the despair of another living soul. She cried in agony, her heart torn to shreds as the weight of so much sorrow overcame her. A cry burst ragged from her lips and she pressed her hands over them.

  Mrs. D had a sense of style bordering on great, and could have been a legendary tastemaker if she weren’t stymied by a secret fear that she was not sufficiently well-bred. All her life this fear had perched on her shoulder, whispering at her and keeping her bound to the conventional.

  But lately she’d discovered a hidden insouciance. Her divorce, which had gone thermonuclear, thank you very much, was now five years past. And having taken up drinking for the first time in her life, she was finding that a hangover brought out a certain roguishness in her. A kind of what-the-hell zest for things. The fact that she’d turned fifty-five the month before had also made her realize that while she’d always look smart, her days as a gladiator in the arena of sex were nearly over. Surprisingly, this realization made her feel cockier, and far better disposed to her fellow man.

  So when her latest commission from that mad old so-called colonel was made known to her, she took to it with glee. She was to assemble and arrange for whatever she deemed necessary for a rustic life in the garden shed, for a bum. Said bum was to be provided with the tools and materials to personalize and finish the arrangements
inside, Mrs. D to think of everything needed for said bum’s homely comforts. No expense need be spared, but it mustn’t look as if it had cost much at all.

  So Mrs. D had planned out the shed and set two carpenters to work, then gone shopping at the flea markets and antiques shops. The Twenty-sixth Street market had yielded just the right shabby things, then she’d fallen for a lot of eighteenth-century wainscoting at a fancy-ass antiques dealer’s uptown.

  “So unutterably chic,” the dealer purred. “Enough to create the most divine, intime room. The paint, you know, is original, made from buttermilk, the pigments dug from the earth. So chalky, such a yellow of nature.”

  “Nature my aunt Sally,” Mrs. D said. “Listen, how much do you want for me to take this load of old boards off your hands?”

  “Three thousand?”

  “Three thousand what?”

  The dealer, a younger French woman with black hair drawn back in a chignon and a ballerina’s goddamn perfect posture, made a face. “Perhaps we are not trading in dollars today?” she said.

  “Nope, we’re not. Let’s deal in French francs today, since you speak that language. What did they last trade at, about four to the dollar?”

  “But that would make, oh I don’t know, but an impossible price!”

  “Seven hundred and fifty.”

  “Twelve hundred, and for that I do not touch them once after taking your filthy money, you must arrange for the delivery yourself. And the check must be made out to cash.”

  The lucre changed hands and a flatbed truck brought the boards to Tenth Street, where Mrs. D conferred with the carpenters about their placement.

  When the job was finished she lit a cigarette, another thing she’d lately said to hell with about, and looked around her. The wainscoting covered the now insulated walls horizontally, as well as the ceiling, which rose to a peak. Three windows had been put in, old ones with new double glazing, one to the right of the door and the other two facing each other on the side walls, one for morning light and one for evening. Said bum’s bed folded out from the wall to the left of the door, the east window just beyond its foot.