Morningside Heights

by Joshua Henkin

  “That’s awful,” Pru said, though she feared she was protesting too much. Because who in the position of this man—who in her own position—didn’t entertain fantasies of leaving? “And now you’re the one taking care of her?”

  “I’m not the main person, no, but I stop by a few times a week. She has the day nurse and the night nurse, but neither the day nurse nor the night nurse was ever married to her.”

  “That’s very generous of you.”

  “She helped put me through graduate school.”

  “That was years ago.”

  “You sound just like my sons. They tell me I should get on with my life.”

  “You haven’t been?”

  “I have.” He went to work every day, he played tennis twice a week, he’d been in a few relationships. But Anne had been his wife no matter what had happened, and she was the mother of his children. “If our boys visited her more, maybe I’d visit her less, but someone has to visit her.” Walter ran his napkin across his face, as if to say he was through—with his meal, with his story. “What’s that old joke? I’ve been talking too much about me—what do you think about me?” He laid his hands on the table. His wrists were as pale as eggshell. His knuckles were pale, too, his fingers long.

  “That tie of yours,” Pru said.

  “This?” It was a bright red tie, the bottom strip slightly longer than the top one. “I’ve despaired of ever getting it right.”

  But she’d meant the tie itself. It was six in the evening, Walter was released from work, but he still had his tie on. “Spence—my husband—he used to say he earned three-quarters of his salary just for grading exams and he was paid in the currency of not having to wear a necktie.”

  “Your husband’s a smart man. I think of ties as women’s revenge for having to wear high heels.”

  “Yet you’re wearing a tie now and no one’s forcing you to.”

  Walter shrugged. “That’s the power of convention for you.”

  At the next table, a girl extended an earbud to another girl so they could listen to music together. Walter examined his reflection in the discarded cutlery. “And there you were, staring at my tie, when I thought it was my tooth you were staring at.”

  “Why would I be staring at your tooth?”

  Walter pulled back his top lip to reveal that one of his front teeth was slightly discolored. “It’s an old basketball injury.” He’d been playing one-on-two against his sons—this must have been twenty years ago—and the older one collided with his mouth. “Dead tooth,” Walter said. He could have gotten it bleached, but it was too much bother, and his wife was paranoid about chemicals. He used to keep her away from the Science Times because whenever she read about a new disease she was convinced she had it. “And then she got Parkinson’s. An old disease.”

  “But you’re not married to her anymore. What’s to stop you from dyeing it now?”

  “I’ve gotten used to it. I tell myself it’s distinguished, like gray hair.”

  “And basketball? Do you still play?”

  Walter laughed. “Take a look at this.” He lifted his pants to reveal the leg of a near-sixty-year-old, bulbous and knobby as an old tree, a tributary of veins running through it. “My war wounds. Twice-torn meniscus, torn ACL, bone chips in both ankles. Certain sports aren’t meant to be played by people over forty. Even my sons have stopped playing basketball. My wife tried to get me to stop playing for years.”

  “You talk a lot about your wife,” Pru said.

  “And you talk a lot about your husband.”

  Actually, she’d mentioned her husband only twice. And the other difference was, she was still married to her husband.

  Walter stared down at his plate, where a few bites of cheeseburger remained uneaten next to a hummock of coleslaw. A man in a black beret was mopping the vestibule. A woman at the next table kept using the word chignon.

  It was dark outside, and through the window Pru could see a bus blundering across town. “Listen,” she said, “it was nice to meet you.”

  “It was nice to meet you, too,” Walter said.

  Out on the street, Pru walked one way and Walter walked the other. She turned around to look at him as he disappeared down the block.

  28

  When Pru and her mother got to Camille’s apartment, Camille introduced them to Bruce, her new boyfriend, who looked, oddly, like Camille herself, with his own angular jaw, his own shock of blond curls. “Happy Thanksgiving!” Camille said.

  “Happy Thanksgiving!” Pru had been planning to bring Spence too, but she feared he wouldn’t enjoy himself, so she arranged for Ginny and Rafe to have Thanksgiving with him.

  A college girl came in and poured wine. Then she returned with plates of hors d’oeuvres: bruschetta with tomato and mozzarella, caramelized onions on fingers of toast, leek tartlets, mushroom beignets. A couple entered the living room wearing matching leather jackets, followed by a young woman in culottes and a man in a silk shirt and a bolo tie. A man sat at the piano, flipping through some sheet music. “Brahms,” he whispered, and the woman beside him slung her arm across his back.

  Then the doorbell rang and it was Walter.

  “Oh,” Pru said. She hadn’t realized he’d be here.

  “I thought I’d surprise you,” Camille said.

  Walter was wearing a dark blazer and gray chinos. He removed a hardhat from his head. “I biked here,” he explained. He kissed Camille on the cheek. Then he kissed Pru on the cheek, and she blushed.

  Everyone seated themselves at the table, and Camille suggested they all say what they were thankful for. Pru disliked these rituals, and she spent the minutes leading up to her turn trying to figure out what to say. Walter seemed as reluctant as she was, though he did his best, saying what everyone else was saying: health, children, relative peace on earth, at least on the tiny part of earth they inhabited. Then it was Pru’s turn, and she said she was thankful for her daughter and her husband, for the years they’d had together. “My husband’s not well,” she said, and everyone nodded somberly.

  Someone said, “I’m thankful Barack Obama is president,” and someone else said, “I’m thankful Lehman Brothers collapsed.”

  One of the guests asked Camille how she and Bruce had met.

  “A group of us went on a camping trip,” Camille said. “I forgot my toothbrush, and Bruce said I could borrow his. It made me think he might like me. Which made me wonder if I might like him.”

  One couple had met Israeli dancing at NYU. Which was funny, the man said, because neither of them was Israeli.

  “Or Jewish,” the woman said.

  “Or students at NYU,” said the man.

  Then it was Pru’s turn and she said, “I pass.”

  A chorus of “Come on!” rose from the table. Even the college girl, who had returned with more wine, seemed eager for her to speak. Thank God for Walter, the only person at the table who wasn’t making her unburden herself, who agreed to do it for her.

  He’d met his ex-wife in high school, Walter said, though they hadn’t known each other at the time. That was how it went at their enormous public school; everyone stuck to their own crowd. But they had the same last name—Cohen—so they ended up with each other’s graduation gown. “And out of that grew a marriage. And, later, a divorce.” Growing up, Walter’s wife had been adamant that she wouldn’t change her name when she got married, and then she didn’t have to. But it bothered her that people would think she’d changed her name, so she considered changing it to Cohen-Cohen. But then she’d have been changing her name in order to prove she wouldn’t change her name, which would have defeated the purpose.

  Out the window, Pru could see the tessellated sparkle of Broadway. A woman got up to play the piano. The other guests rose to walk around before dessert, which left Pru and Walter alone.

  “Where did you get
that?” she said. She was pointing across the room at Walter’s hardhat.

  “At work.”

  “You build things?”

  “I’m a structural engineer. I make sure buildings don’t fall down.”

  “Well, that’s important!”

  “You laugh, but they don’t stay up on their own.”

  But she hadn’t been laughing. It was hot in the apartment, and she wiped a dark frond of hair from in front of her face. She could hear the TV in the other room, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on replay.

  Back at the table, pecan pie was being served, and the college girl brought out coffee and tea. Camille emerged from the kitchen holding a cake with a single candle lit on it. People started to sing “Happy Birthday,” and Pru, not knowing whose birthday it was, sang, too. Then she heard the words Happy birthday, dear Pru, and she started. “How did you remember it was my birthday?”

  “I’ve known you for almost forty years,” Camille said. “Did you think I’d forget?”

  “Is this a big one?” someone said.

  “Big enough,” Pru said. She’d turned fifty-five.

  “More millstone than milestone?” someone said, and someone else said, “Now, now.”

  Walter handed Pru a box covered in gift wrap. “Camille told me it was your birthday, so I thought I’d get you something.”

  She was holding Walter’s gift, fumbling with the ribbon, which was tied so tight she couldn’t undo the knot.

  “Here,” Walter said. “Let me help you.” For an instant their fingers touched.

  It was a cashmere scarf, gray with a red stripe down the middle, like a filament on a candy cane. “It’s beautiful!”

  “Wear it well,” Walter said, and Pru grew teary-eyed. She was thinking of Spence, of the nightgown he’d bought her, how he’d been afraid he would forget her birthday, and now, ten months later, he had.

  * * *

  —

  It was after midnight when they left, and the streets were desolate and hardscrabble. A gust of cold air blew past. “Brrr,” Pru’s mother said, but it was just a show because when it came to the weather, she was hardier than Pru was.

  Broadway was blanketed in darkness. The only illumination came from some fugitive streetlamps and the lights from the twenty-four-hour drugstore, where a couple of solitary figures revolved through the aisles. Pru thought of the neighborhood when she first got here, her trips to the drugstore before the chains came in, loading up on the shampoos of the 1970s: Breck and Wella Balsam and “Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific.”

  On the corner, a drunk called out, “Happy birthday, Jesus!” having gotten his holidays mixed up. A sign hung in a window: beware of the dog. the cat isn’t to be trusted either.

  “I was just thinking,” her mother said. “This is the thirtieth Thanksgiving I’ve been without Dad. And that’s not counting all the Thanksgivings before him.”

  “May you have many more Thanksgivings, Mom.”

  “I don’t know about many.”

  “Ad mayah v’esrim.” Until 120: Moses’ age. Her father had always said those words; if only he’d directed them at himself. He used to bless Pru and her brother Hank every Friday when the sun set. Yesimcha Elohim c’Efraim v’chimnahsheh. Yesimaich Elohim c’Sarah, Rivka, Rachelle, v’Layah. Yevarechicha Adonai v’yishmirecha…And when he died, Pru’s mother took over. Even now, when she didn’t keep Shabbat anymore, Pru would call her mother every Friday afternoon, and she would stand quietly with the receiver pressed to her ear while her mother recited the blessing. “Do you miss Dad?”

  “All the time.”

  Of course she did. They’d been married for thirty-one years, and it had been a good marriage. Her mother rarely spoke about her father; sometimes it seemed as if she’d forgotten him. But she hadn’t forgotten him, she was making clear now; she was just a private person. “You surprised me when Daddy died. I thought you’d drop it all. That you’d stop being religious.”

  “I was married to Dad for most of my adult life. Certain things stick.”

  “Do they?” Because when her father was alive, her mother hadn’t been drawn to religion. Pru recalled when she was a girl and her friend caught her mother eating breaded shrimp.

  “It’s funny,” her mother said, “because I must have been married twenty-five years the first time I was alone for Shabbat. Dad was away for the weekend. You and Hank were gone, too. I asked myself was I really going to observe all the rules when it was just me alone without him?”

  “And did you?”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it without Daddy beside me.”

  “Yet now that he’s dead, you’re more observant than ever.”

  “It’s a paradox, isn’t it?” But her mother was also saying it wasn’t a paradox. Because now that Pru’s father was gone, her mother felt more beholden to him than she had when he was living.

  They were standing at a streetlight, waiting for a dump truck to pass. A woman was bent over a garbage can. “Have there been other people you love?”

  “There have been you and Hank, of course. Nothing’s more important to me than family.”

  “I meant other men.”

  Her mother laughed. “I was eighteen when I met Dad. Back then, high school girls didn’t date.”

  “But after Dad. These past years.”

  Her mother looked bewildered. “You’re asking if I date?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “It’s not like I have to fend the men off.”

  “I bet you do.” Her mother was eighty-three, but she was still attractive. She had her wits about her; she was engaged with the world. “It’s been thirty years, Mom. I wouldn’t mind if you dated again.”

  “But I mind. I like my life the way it is.” Down 81st Street, the wreckage was laid out from the parade: Horton the Elephant, Buzz Lightyear, the Pillsbury Doughboy, everyone in their holding pens. “I’ve been on a few dates, if you must know. This one man was interested in something more serious, but he was eighty-six.”

  “Eighty-six-year-olds are people, too.”

  “I’m not saying he wasn’t a person. But my health is good. Who wants to date an older man?”

  “It’s been done before.” Pru had done it herself—even Spence was older than she was—though she was thinking about Matthew, the man she’d dated when she first moved to New York, forty-seven when she was only twenty-two. A few months ago, she’d run into Matthew for the first time in decades. He was eighty now, but he was still quick-footed and sharp. In this regard, she’d bet wrong. Though what did she want? To be married to a healthy eighty-year-old?

  Her mother said, “You’re the one who should be going out on dates.”

  “You’re forgetting something, Mom. I’m married.”

  “This wasn’t what you bargained for.”

  “No one bargains for anything.”

  “What about Walter?” she said. “He seems lovely.”

  “He could be the loveliest person on earth, but that doesn’t make me any less married.”

  The M104 was an empty canister, churning up slush as it passed. On the corner, a woman removed a pear from her bag and rubbed it vigorously against her coat.

  Back at the apartment, Ginny and Rafe were sacked out in the living room, and Spence was asleep in bed. Pru removed Walter’s scarf from its package. He’d held it only briefly—it was still in the box—but it smelled like him: lemon and cloves and a hint of musk.

  She put the scarf away in the closet. Then, not wanting anyone to see it, she hid it under a pile of clothes.

  * * *

  —

  Spence was asleep when she entered their bedroom, and she touched him gently on the neck. “Spence, darling.” She balled up her socks and put them in her shoes. She folded her cardigan and laid it on the dresser, then remove
d her shirt, bra, and underpants and arranged them side by side.

  She was naked now, their toes touching. She felt his heartbeat through his pajamas, the thrum of his pulse. A guttural sound rose from him; his breath was marshy, brackish. He was asleep and not asleep, pliant, offering up one pajama leg after the other, and she was like a tailor, hunched at his feet. She slid his pajama pants down his thighs, leg by leg, molting him, until all that was left were his legs themselves, goosebumped as a chicken. She slid her hand under his bottom so she could get at the tail of his shirt.

  She untoggled his shirt buttons, going down his flank. Now all that remained was his diaper. She tugged on the Velcro and tossed it into the trash. She kissed his neck, his forehead. There was a burbling inside him, like a pot of tea. “Spence, darling.” She could smell talc and turpentine, and now the vague scent of formaldehyde. A sheen of sweat clung to his stomach.

  She took him in her mouth, and he hardened. A murmur rose from him, a moan, and she said, “Spence, honey, it’s me.” There was a nod or something like it, a tipping of the head. But then he was soft again: an exhalation, an expiration, just the salty, flaccid taste of him. She tried once more, but the blood wouldn’t course through him.

  She mounted him, trying to guide him into her, and this time there was a different sort of moan. She feared she was hurting him, but soon he grew silent. “Spence?” she said. “Darling?” A distant keening came from within him, the receding blare of an alarm, and he rolled onto his side.

  It wouldn’t happen: there was no use.

  She retrieved the diaper from the wastepaper basket, but it was sulfurous and damp, so she got another one. Standing beside the bed, she tilted him like a kayak from side to side, sliding the diaper under him until she got the Velcro to fasten.

  She ran her finger down his spine and brushed the hair from in front of his face. “Go to sleep, darling.” But his eyes were shut and he was already asleep, still as a redwood beneath the covers.