Summer Accommodations: A Novel

by Sidney Hart

  “Choose, choose, choose …” Her voice choked, her face flushed, “choooooossssse!” she sighed as she climaxed. Even with her eyes closed her tears found their way out and streamed down her face. I lay beneath her in silence strangely unaroused.

  “Oh God, what did I do? That’s terrible what just happened …”

  “It’s O.K. you didn’t do anything wrong.

  “Oh … God …”

  “Shhhhh,” I comforted, wiping the rivers of tears from her face.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s O.K. Sarah. I love you,” I said, as though that would make all of her pain and shame, all of her fear and dread, all of the revulsion for the helplessness that human beings feel when faced with their piteous flailing, as though “I love you” could make all of that just go away.

  Chapter Eight

  Breakfast was the easiest meal to serve, the one which gave you time to talk to your guests and to kibbitz with the other waiters and busboys in the kitchen. The August mornings were chilly and I had given up cold milk for hot coffee, and a piece of stale cake. Sometimes I ate with Ron or Harlan but mostly I ate alone. I never felt especially social first thing in the morning and preferred to wade into the day the way one might wade into the cold water of a lake. There were those who might choose to dive into the cold water but I always took my time. I’d also begun smoking again with my breakfast coffee.

  During the meal Mrs. Kimmelman spilled her hot water with lemon on Mr. Gold who graciously assured her he’d never walk again and Mr. Gotlieb—“one T, not two” he’d volunteer to every new person at the table—got a herring bone stuck in his throat which Mrs. Saperstein treated by having him swallow a large piece of bagel coated with cream cheese. It was an otherwise uneventful morning. Harlan collared me during the clean up.

  “I can’t talk to you right now but save time for me after lunch because I’ve got something I think you’ll be interested in.” I had been asking for him and Heidi to double date with Sarah and me and maybe this was what he was going to offer. I couldn’t imagine what else it could be. Harlan disappeared at the morning break but was back at his tables for lunch. It was a sunny, cool, beautiful day. The people were eager to be out of doors and the meal went quickly. When it was finished and my station cleared I hurried back to the waiter’s quarters to meet with Harlan and learn what he had to say.

  “Get cleaned up and then meet me outside the coffee shop,” he said. “It’s about the judge.” I was startled but before I could ask what about the judge, Harlan was gone.

  He began speaking with urgency as soon as we met up. “When I was small, I am an only child you see, my father was at home most of the time …” Harlan paused and composed himself. “He almost never went out of the house. He would take my mother and me for rides in the country on Sundays but he never came to school programs or to parent-teacher meetings. I asked him why he didn’t go out more when I was in grade school and he told me something vague about working for the government and having to stay out of the public eye and do his work in secret. ‘Don’t worry, I have a job, we’re okay, it’s just that it is a secret job and you have to keep it a secret.’ he said. On my own, however, with the logic of a child, I decided that he must be sick with some strange disease and that was why he didn’t go outside except in his car. This made it uncomfortable for me to hug him, afraid that I’d catch his disease, but he was not a very affectionate man so I learned to tolerate his rare hugs.” I couldn’t understand why Harlan was telling me this story about his father but I was thrilled to be taken into his confidence, whatever the reason. “And I never brought any friends to the house because I didn’t want any of them to get sick. He was aware of their absence and one day he asked me who my friends were and why I didn’t bring them home. ‘Are you ashamed of them or is it me you are ashamed of Harlan.’” Harlan mimicked his father in a harsh New York accent. “‘No I’m not ashamed, I just don’t want them to catch your disease,’ I said. He laughed very hard and then he took me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes with a great intensity. Studying me and looking at me up and down, nodding as he appraised me he said, ‘I think you’re old enough to understand the whole truth now. Routine, Harlan,’ he said, ‘routine is the spine of the average man’s day. Wake up, shut off alarm, pee, wash face, brush teeth, shower and shave, get dressed. Eat the same breakfast, take the same walk or bus or train to the same job or office, then home the same way to the same wife and the same newspaper. Day after day after day. Soon the routine is not a supporting spine; soon you find your life is imprisoned, caged, and routine forms the bars of that cage. I couldn’t take it any more, I had to escape.’” He flipped a Lucky Strike out of its pack and lit up. “You’re looking at me and wondering how I can remember the words that he said to me all those years ago aren’t you. Well, imagine if your father told you something so shocking, do you think you’d ever forget it?” The thought of telling him about my father’s “engraved his name on my memory” recollection occurred to me but it seemed so trivial by comparison that instead I asked, “Is he still living, and if he is where is he?” The question seemed to freeze Harlan. His lips tensed, his shoulders sank, and the dark circles of sleepless and restless nights appeared suddenly under his eyes as though he had not slept for days. It had been an alarmingly transforming question and I worried that with this inept blunder I had trespassed into a zone too sensitive to be treated so matter-of-factly. Harlan took a drag on his cigarette, crossed his legs and, shading his eyes with his left hand pressed his fingers against his temples.

  “He’s not well. His lungs are very weak.” He took another puff on his Lucky Strike, exhaled, coughed, and scrutinized the cigarette. “His doctor says he smokes too much but I don’t believe smoking is all that dangerous. I think it’s the pneumonias he gets in the winter that have hurt him.” Then Harlan’s demeanor abruptly changed again. His face brightened and he seemed to experience an unburdening release, as though after years of living in total darkness his vision had been miraculously restored.

  “How would you like to meet him and have him tell you himself what happened back then?” All at once I realized that Harlan was talking about judge Crater; his certainty the judge was not in the well was because he was Harlan’s living father. I almost fell over with the shock of the realization.

  “Would he really want to do that?” The question was asked more with wonder than skepticism.

  “It would give him a great lift, cheer him up. Yes, that’s what we’ll do. He doesn’t get to tell this story very often, as you can imagine, and it would do him a world of good.”

  “Are you really sure the judge would do that just for me?” I snuck my assumption in inconspicuously and he didn’t even blink.

  “Don’t you like to tell your miracle-of-the-broken-leg story? And who enjoys that story more than you do? You really do that for yourself even if you don’t know that. Yes, I’m sure he’d be happy to meet you. You know, I’ve told him all about you, your family, your college plans. He’s still asking me why I don’t bring my friends around so he’ll be delighted to meet you. We’ll take my car.”

  We drove off the hotel grounds in Harlan’s 1951 Buick, a low slung car that looked as much like a Hudson as a Buick, and headed down the State road that circled the lake. Although I had protested going to meet the judge in my soiled sneakers and wrinkled khakis Harlan said it would be best if we just left quickly and used the time for his father’s benefit.

  “It’s already four o’clock. If we leave now we can visit and be back in plenty of time for dinner. If you change your clothes you’ll only waste time and bring attention to us. This way if anyone should ask I can say we’re just going into town for some things.” My heart was racing. This would be the first famous person I’d actually get to meet and I was giddy with excitement.

  “Do I call him ‘judge’ or just ‘Mr. Crater’?”

  “You’ll call him Mr. Hawthorne. He’s now Mr. Thomas Hawthorne.” He laughed. “Do yo
u want to know how he chose that name? When he and my mother were driving out of New York City the night that he disappeared, they drove up the West Side Highway, which leads on to the Sawmill River Parkway in Westchester. That highway connects with the Taconic Parkway at a junction called the Hawthorne Circle. My father said ‘What a great name!’ and he took it for himself right on the spot.” As easy as spelling Melvin J-A-C-K, I thought. Harlan turned on the radio. The local D.J. was babbling excitedly about a Broadway show he had seen over the weekend in New York City. It was called “My Fair Lady” and starred Rex Harrison and a newcomer named Julie Andrews. The D.J. had bought the original cast album and would be playing songs from it all day but he would begin with the song he loved the most in the show: “On the Street Where You Live.” Since Harlan wasn’t much of a baseball fan and although Mickey Mantle was having an outstanding season I couldn’t speculate with him about whether Mantle would break Babe Ruth’s home-run record that summer or keep his batting average above .350 so we listened to the music and drove on in silence. The earnest lyrics of the love song made me think of Heidi and how sad she’d be if she knew that Harlan had an older woman. It made me sad too. I was so happy to have Sarah in my life I couldn’t think of any other girl.

  The car pulled up at a small cabin on the far shore of the lake and as soon as Harlan shut the engine off a pretty middle-aged woman came out on to the porch. I recognized her face immediately; it was the woman I had watched from the bulrushes at the shore the night of the Diana debacle.

  “My mother is very worried about my father’s condition. I visit her every night to try to cheer her up. Sometimes we dance.” He laughed. “I think we danced to the ‘Theme from Picnic’ for an hour one night.”

  “Pretty music,” I commented, omitting my voyeuristic escapade and suddenly feeling great relief about Harlan’s character.

  “You’re not to say anything about this to anyone, understand? Not your brothers or your friend Malcolm, no one.” He was very firm and very serious.

  “Of course not.”

  “That’s a promise?” I nodded vigorously. His mother stepped down from the porch and approached the car on the still finely shaped legs of a former chorus girl. Harlan left the car and when he reached her they embraced.

  “Mother, I want you to meet my friend Jack White,” he said motioning to me to join them. “Jack, this is my mother Helene Hawthorne.” I extended my hand to her but she didn’t take it.

  “What reason do you have for bringing this young man here Harlan Hawthorne,” she said sternly. “Your father is not well and we are not receiving company today.” She spoke with the soft and elegant cadences of someone from the south, Virginia I guessed, and she must have been pretty angry to speak so sternly to her only son.

  “It’s all right mother, Jack is a good friend. No need to put yourself out for him. I wanted him to meet you and dad but we can leave if you’d like,” he offered in contrition. She looked back at me. “I’ve told Jack everything, mother. I’ve told him because I’m going to ask him to help me look for the ring.” She looked at Harlan and then again at me.

  “I am very pleased to meet you Jack,” she said, extending her hand to me. “I apologize for being so rude. My husband has been ailing and that is very upsetting for me.” Her eyes began to well with tears but taking a deep breath she composed herself and continued. “Please, do come inside.” She scanned the area as if searching for spies in the surrounding woods, and motioned us inside.

  The cabin was small. The couch and armchair were of pine and their cushions were covered in a brightly colored plaid fabric. The smell of ashes from a recent fire hung in the humid air. “I apologize for the smell,” she said opening a window, “Mr. Hawthorne gets a chill at night so we always light a fire.” A fit of coughing erupted in another room and then a voice called out, “Is somebody there, Helene?”

  “Harlan’s here, and he’s brought a friend along,” she answered and then lowering her voice she said, “he’s not doing that well these last few days, coughing and wheezing something fierce.” “I’ll go say hello and ask if he’s feeling up to meeting Jack. The company might cheer him up.” She nodded her consent and then turned back to me. “Can I get you something cold to drink Jack? We have lemonade and Coca Cola. I despise that Pepsi stuff,” she said smiling politely.

  “Nothing for me, thank you ma ‘am,” I returned equally politely, a southern accent creeping into my voice, Harlan’s words, “help me look for the ring” still ringing in my ears. On the fireplace mantle was a photograph of a man wearing a starched white collar and dark tie. His slicked back hair was parted down the middle, the part leading my eyes down to the bridge of a spade shaped nose whose pointed tip directed me to his wide mouth which curled at its corners with just the barest beginning of a smile. Looking back at Helene Hawthorne I saw the finer facial features that Harlan had inherited from her.

  “Come on in here Jack,” Harlan called out from the bedroom. His mother smiled, raised her eyebrows and nodded towards the other room.

  The bedroom was a small, dimly lit space with curtains drawn across the windows. The smell of stale bedclothes mixed with the pungent odor of Musterole and made the air in the room feel close and unhealthy. In the large bed facing the curtained windows an old man lay under the cover of a wrinkled white sheet and a blue and white quilt. On the night table beside the bed there was a glass pitcher filled with water, an empty glass, a box of tissues and a bottle of aspirin all huddled under the broad shade of the reading lamp. The man, the judge, coughed and choked when he tried to speak to me. He was a big man filling the bed from the headboard almost to the foot. His head seemed disproportionately small for such a large body and his gaunt, pale face appeared different from the one I’d just seen in the photograph. For one thing his hair had turned gray and was much thinner than it had been in the picture, though it was still divided by a central part. And his nose was more bulbous than spade shaped. He pulled a tissue from the box, wiped his face all around with it and then spat into it crumpling it up immediately.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jack,” he said pulling another tissue from its box and wiping his mouth. “You’ll understand if I don’t shake your hand. It’s not TB but you don’t want this muck on your hands.” His false teeth clattered in his mouth as he spoke and when he breathed I could hear the air wheezing through his pipes and disrupting secretions that rumbled and gurgled in protest. Then he had another fit of coughing. He threw the soiled tissues into a pail beside his bed, quickly pulled out two more from the box and wiped and spat again.

  “Are you okay dad?” Harlan asked with evident concern.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said waving a hand at his son. “This is how it’s been all week. I think those fires are too smoky for me. I’ll just wear a sweater at night, that’s all.” His voice, authoritative and confident, had a harsh New York accent.

  “I’ve been telling Jack about you and how we came to be the Hawthornes, but I thought it might cheer you up to tell him about your decision yourself, you know, how the routine got to you and you just had to break away.” The old man smiled and looked over at me.

  “You interested in this?” he asked cocking an eyebrow and smiling at me.

  “Yes sir.” He started to chuckle but that action triggered yet another fit of coughing and wheezing. Harlan hurried to his side and offered two more tissues.

  “Maybe we should do this another time,” I said.

  “No! No, I’ll feel better when I get started with this story. It’ll get my juices flowing and that always dries up the cough. How much have you told him Harlan?”

  “That you were a judge, a very famous judge, and about your speech to me about routine becoming a prison. I didn’t get to how you decided to break free and the weekend in Maine when it all happened.” The judge smiled.

  “It was a very corrupt time. It’s important that you understand that and not just see me as a middle-aged man running off with a showgirl because he was b
ored; a very corrupt time. Judgeships were for sale if you knew the right people. As a lawyer all you had to do was lay out one year of the position’s salary in advance and the job was yours. The money went through the usual channels of the party into many, many pockets. I did not do that, Jack, I want you to know that. My appointment was made by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, probably the only man in New York politics who didn’t know the rules of the game. All he knew were his presidential ambitions and for them he groomed and courted people who were high above the political hurly burly. Robert Wagner knew, but he wanted me to get me on the court cleanly. I had been his law clerk years before. The Senator probably had other things in mind for me, but he didn’t get the chance to lay them out because I was gone before the court’s fall session began. At the time I was married to a woman named Mary. We lived on Fifth Avenue near Washington Square and we had a summer cottage in Maine. In August I would take the month off and we’d go away to the cottage. By that August, in the summer of 1930, I had already laid the groundwork for my escape.” The judge coughed once, cleared his throat, and poured himself a glass of water. “I had begun to stay late at work the previous December. My practice was busy and successful so it did not seem at all unreasonable for me to be at work into the evening. Then there was my political work for the Democratic Party as well. But I wasn’t always at work. Some nights I’d go to a speakeasy, you must remember there was still prohibition in 1930, Jack, and meet some of the boys. There were always dancers and actresses, girls who liked to come to the bars too and that was how I found my Helene.” He smiled and took a sip of water. “As soon as I met her I was in love in a way I had never known. The dull routine of my life became intolerable but I had to plot out an escape route that would let us disappear completely.” He started to cough again and while Harlan slapped his father’s back and tended him with tissues I thought of how the judge had divided himself in half just like the part that divided his hair. One half was the serious attorney in starched collars and expensive suits, the other, the half that lied about working late at the office, was a hard drinking fun loving friend of the theater. It was easy for me to imagine which life he came to love more. “I’m sorry Jack, but that one wasn’t as bad as the last few so let me continue. I made a lot of money as a lawyer but by then practicing the law felt as bad as this chronic affliction that has laid me up in my bed. When Senator Wagner told me of his plans for me, an appointment to the State Supreme Court, I saw the way out. By leaving a trail of evidence that would suggest impropriety I could then expose the system and make myself appear to be implicated. In May, Roosevelt appointed me to the court and immediately I went into action. I withdrew money from several accounts and sold stocks and bonds adding up to the sum of $52,000, the annual salary of a supreme court justice, the amount it ordinarily would have cost for such an appointment, and I went on with my dual existence. Mary, my wife at the time, was a devout Catholic so divorce was out of the question. We’d been unable to have children and that might have allowed me to seek an annulment—the Church is always partial to those who wish to multiply—but to have suggested that to Mary would have raised other suspicions when I disappeared, so I held back. Then, in June, I called the district attorney, anonymously of course, and with my voice disguised like this,” and suddenly he was a Boston Brahmin, “I informed the gentleman that one George Ewald had paid $10,000 for the honor of being appointed to the bench in one of the lower courts of The State of New York. When the D.A. requested more information I hung up.” Then his voice returned to its casual and comfortable New Yorkese, his verbal equivalent of an old but treasured robe. “I didn’t like Ewald and was happy to turn him in. I waited for August knowing from my contacts in his office that the D.A. was likely to act early in that month. Mary and I left for Belgrade Lakes on Friday August the first. Before we left I arranged with Helene to call me on that coming Sunday so I could tell Mary that something had come up requiring my return to New York.” He cleared his throat, took a sip of water, but didn’t cough. His enthusiasm, as he’d predicted, had released a drying flood of adrenalin. “When her call came that Sunday I said I had to go back to New York for business reasons. I told Mary it was nothing serious, just a few things to clear up, a few people who needed straightening out, and then I had the driver take both of us to the train station. Promising to be back the following Saturday in time for her birthday I left her on the platform of the station, waving goodbye. I never saw her again. After returning to New York I saw a few friends and did a little business at the office and some socializing at the restaurants. I went shopping at the Abercrombie and Fitch store in midtown and had them send a red canoe to Mary for her birthday. Red was about the last color I would have associated with that dour woman. It was my private joke of a sort. For the next few days I lunched at Schrafft’s as usual and hung around the office waiting for the district attorney to go into action, but I was getting impatient and a little careless. I caught my finger in the door of a taxi and had to visit my doctor who was also a friend and we had dinner at his home that night. That calmed me down a bit. What I had come back to town for happened on my third day in the city. The district attorney announced he was going to investigate Judge George Ewald. The alleged $10,000 bribe had shaken up the whole system. That announcement freed me and I went into action immediately. I had my assistant, Joe Mara, cash checks on separate bank accounts for more than $5,000 while I remained at my office and spent the morning tearing up old files. It was to look like a panicky effort to destroy evidence, but for me it was a joyful celebration of release. I would have thrown all the papers out of the office window, strewing them like bits of tickertape for a parade, but that was not the tone I wanted to set. Then I stuffed papers and files into two large briefcases and several cardboard boxes. When Joe returned it was an effort not to laugh out loud when I saw the expression on his face. That poor bastard, he looked like he’d just been caught with his hand down a young boy’s pants. The impression that I had done something horribly wrong and was now in a panic had been made. I had my assistant help bring all the boxes back to my apartment on Fifth Avenue and told him I was going swimming in Westchester County, but that was not what my plans were. Instead of going swimming I went to a ticket agent and bought a single ticket for a new show called ‘Dancing Partner’—I couldn’t resist the irony—and arranged to have a friend pick it up for me at the box office later that evening. Then I had a showgirl friend of Helene’s and mine, Sally Ritz, stage a chance meeting. Sally was dating a lawyer friend of mine and she got the lawyer to take her to Billy Haas’s Steak House on West 45th Street where I would just happen to arrive at the same time as they did. Do you see what I was doing?” I shook my head no, already dizzy with the lurching pace and course the judge had traveled. He laughed a hearty laugh and rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I was planting evidence and laying false trails all over the place. The theater ticket, the story about swimming in Westchester, acting like I was desperate in one place, hail fellow well met in another. Who was lying and who was telling the truth would be the question to answer when the police started to look for me and tried to piece together what had become of the missing judge Crater. I managed to be even more confounding by staying at dinner well past the curtain time of the play. When my lawyer friend asked what I was doing I simply said I was having too good a time and enjoying myself too much to leave. A while later, on cue, Sally excused herself to go to the little girl’s room, but what she actually did was to call Helene and tell her that it was time to pick me up on Tenth Avenue and 46th Street as we’d prearranged. Shortly after Sally returned we all left the restaurant. I said goodnight, hailed a taxi and drove off towards the Hudson River at nine fifteen p.m. on Wednesday, August sixth 1930. No one, besides Helene, ever saw judge Joseph Force Crater again. I was free.” The sick old man I had been introduced to was now gone. In his place was a revived man who sat up, motioned to Harlan to approach, and lifted a Lucky strike from the pack in his son s shirt pocket.
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