The Ghost of Greenwich Village: A Novel

by Lorna Graham

  “I think to be complete, your series, which I believe is called Unknown Treasures, should have something literary, which I realize is well-trodden territory,” said Eve. Orla put the pages down on the desk with what looked like a bored expression. “But this would be something new, something the world has literally never seen before.”

  “And why do you care? What would you get out of this?”

  “I want to work on it. I want to work for you.”

  “You worked for me once. Things didn’t go so well.”

  This was the blow she’d been anticipating, and she was prepared. “Look, I made a mistake about the fish my first day, I admit. I was intimidated by everything at Smell the Coffee. I was new in town, in over my head, and afraid to say something in case I was wrong and looked stupid. But I earned my way into that department. You can ask anyone, even Mark. I’m a good writer, a quick study, and I work hard.” She paused, looking down at the cake. “Even at this. You can call my manager at the bakery. The number’s on the box.”

  Orla squinted at her.

  “I’ve taken up enough of your time for today,” said Eve, standing. She thought it best if she was the one to end this meeting. “But I’ll be honest about something. I can’t work for anyone else in television. Giles Oberoy has made sure no one will hire me. That’s why I’m delivering cakes. He fired me for not kowtowing to Bliss Jones during our interview. It wasn’t fair,” Eve said, running her palms down the front of her thighs. She paused a moment. “Just like maybe them firing you wasn’t fair.”

  She backed out and shut the door quietly behind her.

  • • •

  Nearly a week had gone by since their meeting and Orla hadn’t called. Eve wanted to kick herself. Why had she been so stupid as to leave all that material behind? Even if Orla decided she liked the idea, she could just keep everything and do it herself. She had only pieces of the manuscript, but she had enough to work something out if she really wanted to.

  In any case, Orla probably wasn’t interested at all. That’s what it usually meant when you didn’t hear from people.

  Eve drafted a new list of literary agents, but none was interested in seeing anything short of a full manuscript. And she and Donald weren’t anywhere near done.

  “Donald?” Silence greeted Eve as she entered her apartment. She trudged to her room, crawled onto the bed, and sandwiched her head between two pillows. She felt Highball jump lightly onto the mattress and lie down, pressing her warm, soft bulk into Eve’s ribs.

  So this was what the end looked like. It had been there all along really, just waiting for her to see it. This past year had been a masquerade, one long session of dress-up. But now it was time to take off the drapey dress, kick off the sloshy shoes, and admit it was over. Strangely, she thought as she moved the top pillow for some air, the moment didn’t feel as bad as she’d thought it would. She might even call it a relief. It was clear now: Her time away from home had served the purpose it was meant to. To shake her out of her zombie-like malaise.

  And home wasn’t so bad! Those wide-open spaces. Family she had come to appreciate. It wasn’t like she’d be going back with her tail between her legs. She wouldn’t live in Rolling Links, for one thing. She’d move into the city. Gin would be so happy to have her back, he might even pay for grad school instead of law school. That way she could study writing. Working on the book, she’d been bitten by the bug. She wouldn’t mind becoming an editor, either. Or she could get another job in television; after all, she hadn’t been blackballed in the Midwest.

  The next few days would be a time of goodbyes. Or would they? Undoubtedly easiest for everyone would be for her to simply slink out of town. It would be impossible to say goodbye to Gwendolyn face-to-face anyway. She’d never had a friend like her. For a moment, Eve contemplated moving to Queens or some other borough. At least they’d be only a subway ride from one another. But the thought made her shudder. The whole point had been to live in the Village.

  Besides Gwendolyn, who’d really miss her? Klieg was all right now. He and Günter were still in Germany, spending time as a family with Klieg’s brother, Henrik—they’d made up—and his wife, Claudia. They were having eine wunderbare Zeit, according to Klieg’s latest postcard.

  Quirine? She would be a little sad, but she and Victor were in major cocooning mode. Likewise Russell and Susan. Couples were different.

  As for Vadis, the one who started it all, the one who talked Eve into believing she could make it here like the “thousands of others doing it every day”? Eve tried to wonder what Vadis was doing these days but couldn’t bring herself to care.

  And Donald. She literally could not imagine life without him. But he’d be fine without her, eventually. He acted as though he was excited at the thought of having his memoir published, but he was probably just going along because she was enjoying it so. If she left, he’d soon have a new tenant to harass. And now that he’d honed his physical skills, his fun would increase exponentially.

  These things that she told herself swirled through her mind and acted on her like a sleeping pill, gently sucking away her instinct to struggle against fate.

  • • •

  She felt silly even sitting at the library. There was no way she could finish the stupid book. Even if she managed to complete it once she got back to Ohio, and even if she managed to find a publisher, she’d have no way of ever telling Donald.

  “Did you ever get that last box?” she asked when she reached the front of the line at the desk.

  “Been saving it for you,” said Mrs. Chin. “Here.” The box was smaller than the others, perhaps a foot square, but it had the same cavelike smell.

  “Thank you,” said Eve, picking it up. She turned to go, then remembered her question. “Did you ever find out who the benefactor was?”

  “His name’s on just about everything inside that box; you can’t miss it.” Mrs. Chin smiled with her lips pressed together, then went back to her paperwork.

  Eve placed the box on her table and unfolded the four flaps of cardboard that latticed to make its top. Sitting inside were about a dozen soft-backed notebooks, all identical, with marbleized brown covers, black spines, and white labels containing dates. Before opening any of them, she put them in order. They spanned 1960 to 1969. She opened the first one: 1960, April–November. Inside the cover there was a label: PROPERTY OF.

  Mike McGuire was the name scripted on the line provided.

  Eve scooted her chair in closer to the table. Mike McGuire. Donald’s disciple.

  It was a thrilling moment until she realized with a thud that the man she’d hoped to locate—somehow—and interview, was dead. Nothing was going right anymore. She sighed, rubbed her forehead, and pulled out a pad to take notes.

  The first notebook told the story of a young man deciding to move to Manhattan from upstate New York, the Finger Lakes region. He wrote about his well-meaning but stifling parents, the factory work he was expected to take on, just like his older brother, the friend who proposed they hitchhike down to the city for a wild weekend the summer after high school. A weekend that turned into a lifetime.

  He started in a rented room on MacDougal Street. Apparently, he’d first seen Donald at the San Remo on Bleecker.

  We go for the dollar salads and all the bread you can eat. The writers are there and their conversations are spontaneous art, like jazz, meant for public consumption. I don’t know how they put themselves on display like that. I find myself looking at one more than the others. He has a short beard and a face that’s alert. His eyes miss nothing, not even me in the corner.

  And he seems to Get The Joke. You know? I hear he’s a short story man. Experimental. A toothbrush as a symbol for the universe. What would Pa and his factory buddies say?

  Mike McGuire had hoarded literary journals, looking for inspiration. It took him almost a year to work up the courage to write something himself, and when he did, it was like a gasket had sprung a leak. He couldn’t stop. He even began
to speak up at the San Remo.

  Outside, the blue sky began to darken, and Eve hastened to cram in as much as she could. She couldn’t bear to have to come back and finish another time. She read about Mike’s invention of the “stoem”: a combination of a short story and a poem. It was a somewhat unwieldy enterprise, with some lines rhyming and others not. He’d included several in his diaries and many of them resembled Donald’s work at the time, but with heart. More like Donald was writing now. He wasn’t as talented as Donald, of course, but his work was passionate.

  Mike had died just a few months ago, more than thirty-five years after the final writings in the box. Donald said he’d gone traveling. Did he produce work somewhere else, or had he quit writing? And if so, why? If he’d kept at it, he might have gotten somewhere. Eve kept reading, jotting notes on her pad. She still had one more notebook to go when the library staff began to shuffle around, cleaning up for the night.

  She brought back the box. “I’ll be back tomorrow. For this last one.”

  “Not happening,” said Hector, the tall and jowly evening manager. “They’re going off to be photographed and catalogued in the morning. We should have them back in a couple of weeks, though.”

  Eve was just about to stammer something when Mrs. Chin came over. “Which one is it, dear?”

  “This.” She pulled it out of the box.

  “I’ll keep it for you. As long as you’re back tomorrow. Can’t hold off the hounds forever.” Mrs. Chin gave Hector an elbow to his waist, which was as high as she came on him. He walked off muttering something about the decline of Western civilization.

  • • •

  As soon as she was done with her bakery shift, at five before seven, Eve was back at the library. Mrs. Chin was helping someone with a rather involved problem and slid the book at her without a word. Moments later, Eve was settled at her table, back in Mike’s world.

  He fell in love. He didn’t write this, but she could tell. Suddenly, his obsession with other writers and his competitiveness with them subsided. They were replaced by a new appreciation for life’s small joys. A spring day in Washington Square Park. A Lord & Taylor tie fished out of a bin at the Salvation Army. A marshmallow melting on top of a mug of hot chocolate. He stopped observing everything, and began starring in his own story. There were weeks, even months, when he wrote nothing at all.

  Then he was drafted for Vietnam. And everything changed.

  They didn’t want to send him into battle; they wanted him to write propaganda. The campaign, to be printed on fake Vietnamese banknotes and dropped from aircraft above villages, was to engineer the destruction of the country’s economy. He was told little more, other than that he would become part of “a long, noble history” of military psyops.

  Even though the assignment would have saved him from combat, Mike refused. He refused because of Donald, because of the long shadow that propaganda writing had cast over Donald’s life. Donald had said it was the worst thing a writer could do: to use his ability to deceive, to obfuscate. Mike supposed committing his body to fight in Vietnam was a form of lying, too, since it was not a war he agreed with. But it was more honest than using his God-given writing talent to do the opposite of what words were created to do, which was, he believed, to enlighten.

  His girl did not understand. If he took the writing job, he would be in Washington, able to travel to New York often. And he would be safe! How could he abandon her for war when he didn’t have to? She implored him to stay. She did his laundry, made him enormous lasagnas that lasted all week, anything to make his life in New York pleasant and comfortable. Unleaveable.

  Two hours later, Eve had her elbows on the table, her chin on her fists, just pages from the end. Someone began to dim the lights on the far end of the floor, bringing her back to the present with a start. She wasn’t about to give up the notebook for two weeks. She might not even be in New York that long. Eve took a look over her shoulder. An old man was dozing at the table behind her. She slipped the diary into her bag.

  Walking with an air of self-assurance, she left the library without speaking to anyone. She hurried along West Tenth Street, under the streetlamps, not looking back.

  • • •

  Eve hopped onto the last available bar stool at the White Horse. The bourbon tasted rich and warm, like beef. It slid down her throat, all the way to her toes. The men on either side of her offered to buy it for her, offers she politely declined. She opened the journal, skimming hungrily through the last fifteen pages, written while Mike was stationed at Camp Lejeune.

  And then, she got to the very end.

  I deploy tomorrow.

  She leaves, too. Leaves New York.

  I’ve never written her name in these pages. I thought it would jinx everything. It’s jinxed anyway.

  Am I doing the right thing? Honor versus love. How childish of me to think I’m the first to face this choice, yet that’s what it feels like.

  Soon I’ll be dodging bullets in a jungle.

  Why? I ask myself a thousand times a day.

  Because the alternative is intolerable.

  I’ll go east and she’ll go west. Opposite directions, literally and figuratively. To that ’50s throwback of a man who’s crazy about her.

  I could ask her to wait for me, but that wouldn’t be fair. I might never come back.

  Here’s the kicker: After me begging all this time, she finally shows me something she’s written. Written it just for me, isn’t that swell?

  A stoem of her own. The very idea of it breaks my heart.

  Funny, isn’t it? Even as I prepare to sacrifice everything for the honor of words, they have turned their backs on me.

  They are but little fiends.

  • • •

  These were the last lines Mike had written. The only other thing in the diary was a yellowed piece of paper, tucked behind the last page. It was folded up into sixths and slightly curved, as if it had been wedged for a long time inside a wallet.

  My Love,

  Did you get the brownies? The gang had a fight at the Gaslight the other night about whether the army allows treats or whether they’re considered contraband.

  I guess you are about done with basic. Thanks for the picture. The short hair suits you, though the boys here would tease you mercilessly.

  I know you’re doing what you’re doing because you believe it’s the right thing. I can even agree.

  Your sacrifice is to give up safety. My sacrifice is to give up you. I’m part of your fight, whether you see it that way or not.

  Just as you’re making the choice you can live with, so must I.

  I can’t live waiting for word about your fate. And I can’t live in New York without you.

  So I’m starting over, going back home. Try to think of it as a good thing. I’ll be “taken care of,” as you put it, and you won’t have to worry. You can forget me and devote your energy to surviving.

  I won’t contact you again. Even if I change my mind. So you don’t have to waste time hoping.

  Yes, I’m doing the easier thing—and I know how much you hate that word! The least I can do is admit it to you.

  I know I’ll carry the guilt of this choice all my life. And yet the alternative is, to me, unbearable.

  Until the great hereafter, when I pray I’ll see you again, I leave you with a “stoem” of my own. I know it’s not any good; consider it reflective of my mood.

  PE

  Untitled

  I came upon a house of cards, full of jokers and kings. They made me afraid to gamble.

  Till I met a wonderful jack. Named Mack. You called me the girl with the Strawberry Eye, and plucked me from my fears.

  I was through the looking glass—but finally everything was right side up.

  Now you’re leaving. I don’t think you’re playing with a full deck.

  You’re going to war; but aren’t we worth fighting for?

  You say I’m not brave. But I’m the one that you could save.r />
  Now the house of cards is collapsing. I can’t hold it up without you.

  So I’m putting down my hand and away will I slink.

  Raise a glass to me: I’m marrying a man named for a drink.

  Eve read the lines again, this time softly aloud, feeling the weight of them in her mouth. The man next to her turned to look at her, but everything faded until all she heard was her heartbeat in her ears.

  The reference to “Mack.” The girl with the “Strawberry Eye” who married a man “named for a drink.” It could only be Penelope.

  Penelope had told her she’d loved someone before her father. It was Donald’s disciple.

  Mack had been the reason she’d loved New York so much, and the reason she’d left it. Done the easier thing, picked the sure thing—Gin. She’d given up on the city and herself.

  Eve took another swallow of bourbon and swiveled in her seat. She wondered if Penelope and Mack had ever seen each other again. She guessed that they hadn’t.

  Penelope’s decision to leave, made right here on this piece of paper, had changed her life. Her guilt over abandoning Mack, even if he had abandoned her first, and her regret over leaving New York, had haunted every single day. Eve and her brothers had suffered as a result. So had Gin, who lived with a woman who was always somewhere else.

  Here in New York, Eve lived in the shadow of Donald’s guilt. And Klieg’s. Louisa had apparently lived a life of remorse, too, a life circumscribed by choices she’d made in her youth.

  From each action stemmed collateral damage; who knew how much? If Penelope had stayed in New York, when Mack returned from war, he might have kept writing and might have perpetrated Donald’s ideas. Penelope might have become a writer or editor herself, if Aunt Fern was right. And if Klieg had let Louisa make a true choice, what then? If she’d picked him, he could have lived in happiness. If she hadn’t, he might have found someone else, someone who truly loved him. And if Donald had fought for Louisa, what kind of man, and artist, might he have become?

  Donald, Louisa, Penelope. Each had seen dreams go up in smoke because they had done what was, in some way, easier. And each had died, if not of a broken heart, then certainly with one.