19 Purchase Street

by Gerald A. Browne

  He drank vodka and Seven-Up from a styrofoam coffee cup at ten in the morning. And he no longer held to his noontime ritual of picking the horses. That, along with all else, had become uninteresting for him. Besides, the bookie, Manny, was no longer around.

  The connection never occurred to the father. He would never know that the day the mother went was the day Manny went. Manny had collected his accounts (except the twenty the father owed), emptied his safe deposit boxes and flown.

  “Don’t take nothing with you,” Manny had told the mother.

  “Not even a few things?”

  “Nothing. Whatever you got I’ll get you better in Miami.”

  If the father had known about Manny, naturally it would have made a difference. He would have felt more of a fool—all those afternoons since Manny first came into their lives that the mother was supposed to have been doing Bonwit’s or Saks. At least the father would have been offered a reason not to turn it all in on himself. Much of the father’s hurt came from having his self-illusions exposed. How could he accept that he’d been such a bad judge of character? She’d been his wife and he’d not even seen a hint of it coming. His ability to know people had made him sure of them and, therefore, sure of himself. Belief in that had been his private glue.

  He came apart.

  Tried mending with vodka, and soon enough Smirnoff 100 proof gave way to the greater number of drinks per dollar of a Jersey City brand that had a skinny blue and silver eagle and Russian-like lettering with backward Rs on its label. It got so he would pour a drink in the refrigerator last thing each night so first thing next morning all he had to do was reach in for it.

  At the agency he was assigned an assistant who had the eyes and attitude of a replacement.

  By then the mother had been gone almost a year. It was April. A day that came gray and went wet. The father had no umbrella. For the first time ever he left his attaché case at the office. He walked partway home, to a bar on Seventh Avenue in the fifties, a serious, stand-up drinker’s place. His toes squished in his shoes, the soaked wool on his shoulders smelled unpleasant. Perhaps he was shaking because he was chilled. He stood at the hard bar and had three of the best, Stolichnaya, lifting his glass slightly before downing them, as though in acknowledgement to something inside him. He bought one for the drinker next to him.

  At that moment the father became four inches taller. He stood straight, drew his shoulders back and bowed his spine as before.

  He walked from the bar with a stride that was inconsistent with the rain. Head and eyes up he crossed the sidewalk, sidled between the bumpers of two illegally parked cars. Never hesitated. Continued out into the rushing stream of the avenue. One-way traffic flowing north. The father didn’t even glance into it. If anything, his head turned in the opposite direction, to not see it coming.

  Of all the ways to go, he’d chosen that to get around a clause in his life insurance policy that said death by war or suicide was worthless but accidental death paid double.

  The insurance company held up payment.

  No matter that the father had never in twenty years been late paying the premiums. There were sworn statements from people at the agency that the father had been depressed. Not merely despondent but bottom-of-the-heap depressed. And there were dispositions from two witnesses saying the father had intentionally lunged out in front of the fast taxi. Indeed, he had stepped out so deliberately it might have appeared that he lunged.

  The insurance company said it regretted to say it found in its favor. A New York State judge had signed the decisive document along with others in a stack. A lightly-penciled red check on its upper right hand corner told him he should.

  After the father’s funeral Norma and Gainer remained at the apartment on West End Avenue. Norma cooked whatever they wanted and Gainer slid on the rugs a lot. The lady who lived across the hall looked in on them. Norma told her an aunt was coming to live with them, an Aunt Helen from Spokane.

  Next morning, when Norma was doing dishes and Gainer was pushing a dust mop around, another lady was at their door. From the Bureau of Child Welfare. A fieldworker named Miss Phelps, who showed her official identification. Norma pretended to examine it carefully while thinking ahead about which things to say.

  Miss Phelps asked if she could come in after she was already in. She went through the apartment as though not expecting to find someone else there, and her silence seemed to be belief when Norma told her an Aunt Carol was on her way from Akron.

  Miss Phelps helped Gainer pack his things. Norma packed her own. They went downtown to 70 Lafayette Street where Miss Phelps turned them over to Miss Gurney. She was a caseworker and they were now a case. They sat on hard city chairs in Miss Gurney’s cubicle and Norma gave true answers.

  “Do you have any idea where your mother is?”

  “Last we got was a postcard from her, from an island. It was a hotel postcard that showed a swimming pool and palm trees.” The ink in the mother’s handwriting had gotten smeared, on its way or at poolside.

  “When was that?”

  “Just after Christmas.” Which was months before.

  “Nothing since then?”

  “Nope.”

  “You have grandparents, don’t you?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “How about aunts or uncles?”

  “An Uncle Howard lives in San Diego.”

  “Howard what?”

  “Howard is his last name.”

  “What does he do?”

  “I’m not sure. I think he sells Chevrolets or something.”

  Five phone calls and Miss Gurney had the right Mr. Howard on the line. She explained the situation and asked: “Do you know where Mrs. Gainer is at the moment?”

  “No, but I’m damned concerned. This is a terrible situation. Those children are my flesh and blood …”

  Miss Gurney’s expression anticipated the however.

  However, Uncle Howard was about to move to Hawaii for his health. He’d recently been divorced and his blood pressure was dangerously high. Otherwise …

  Miss Gurney understood, said good-bye to Uncle Howard after she hung up.

  Was there anyone else?

  No. Norma decided not to mention an Aunt Marion in Someplace, Illinois, who had never been more than a name to her.

  No one.

  Miss Gurney placed them.

  In a home for such children. The Mission of the Immaculate Virgin better known as Mount Loretto. Located on the southern tip of Staten Island, it faced out on Raritan Bay. Few places were so distant from the city and still a part of it.

  Gainer enjoyed the ferry ride over. But at Mount Loretto the sisters, in their habits and headpieces, seemed to be hands and faces without bodies. Gainer was fascinated by them but not sure he shouldn’t be frightened. He didn’t like having so many people telling him what to do, instead of just Norma.

  He saw her every day but not enough. Often he got the feeling she wasn’t there, that she’d been taken away, until to his relief she came in sight. Some days they’d sit outside on the slope of grass and watch big ships in the Red Bank Reach, as the channel off there was called. One morning they counted seventy-three sailboats, although the way the boats cut and tacked across and around one another there must have been some they counted twice.

  Another morning Norma took Gainer for a walk.

  “Where are we going? he asked.

  “Just keep walking,” she told him.

  They crossed over Hylan Boulevard, beyond the grounds of Mount Loretto. Kept to back streets all the way to Huguenot Station where they caught a local electric train that took them to the end of its line: the ferry terminal. A ferry was just then pulling out. It growled contemptuously at those who’d missed it and its seething wake looked as though it could boil anyone who fell in. But soon another ferry headed into the slip, a friendlier ferry, its bow smiling at the waterline. For only a nickel each it skimmed Norma and Gainer across New York harbor and deposited them on the
toe of Manhattan.

  They had eleven dollars to go on. And hope in the address of a girl named Dolores Hart. She had been at Mount Loretto the year before, was now out on her own with a nice place of her own, Norma had been told.

  400 East Eightieth Street.

  It was a six storied building, fifty years older than those on either side of it, apparently depending on them for support. In its entranceway were twelve abused mail boxes, each with a mail slot and an intercom buzzer button. Only four of the boxes had printed names. The others had names scratched over names on the bare metal.

  There was no Hart, not even a Dolores.

  Norma checked several times. She couldn’t even tell which was apartment 6-R because the numbers on the buzzer buttons were so worn. Perhaps, Norma thought, the girl at Mount Loretto who had given her Dolores Hart had made a mistake on the address. Or maybe Dolores Hart was only a fancy, a haven invented out of the girl’s own wishful thoughts.

  Gainer was chewing on his thumbnail, a sign that he was hungry.

  Norma pressed all twelve buttons, causing voices so faint they seemed from distant, tiny people.

  “It’s me,” Norma said in a register lower than normal.

  At once a raspy buzzer sounded, enabling the inner door to be opened.

  Norma and Gainer climbed. Steps covered and re-covered with linoleum. The metal edgings nailed on the front of some were loose enough to trip on. There was an inconsistent lean to every flight and landing, a slant one way and then an opposite list. The entire stairwell had long ago settled as much as it ever would and so was more reliable than it appeared.

  On the sixth floor the only apartment had a door painted baby pink. The high gloss paint, amateurishly sprayed on, had run in places. There was no name or number or doorbell.

  Norma knocked politely.

  She thought she heard movement inside but no one came to the door. She knocked again, several times and certainly loud enough, but still no one came.

  Gainer put his ear to the door. “Someone’s in there,” he said.

  Norma doubted it. She was full of misgivings. They should leave now, forget ever having heard of Dolores Hart. They should take the long ride back to Mount Loretto, back to sure beds and meals.

  “Wait here,” she told him.

  She hurried down the six flights and in twenty minutes came back up bringing a pizza in a box and four cold Pepsis. They sat on the landing. The string on the box cut white into Gainer’s hands but he broke it, while Norma opened the drinks and put straws in them. She’d brought extra napkins but could have used more with the melt on their chins and fingers. When they’d had enough, two slices of the pizza were left. For those, possibly for later, Norma made a smaller box out of the larger, tied it neatly with the string.

  There they sat. With their backs against the wall. Norma put her arm around to have Gainer truly next to her. The bare bulb in the fixture above was only twenty-five watts but still it exposed where wet moppings of the linoleum had turned dust into dirty cake at every corner and angle. Norma pictured where they were in relation to the city, and expanding further, the city to her mental map of the coast and ocean. Her imagination returned so suddenly to being there on that tilted landing it seemed to her she was surely too small to be protection for him, smaller yet, whose boychest and heartbeat she felt on the flat of her hand.

  Scratching sounds. On the inside surface of the painted pink door. A cat, Norma thought, that must have been what she’d heard before. She doubted a Dolores Hart lived there.

  The hour that passed seemed like four.

  The pink door opened and a man came out. He hardly glanced at them, stepped over their legs and went down the stairs. A girl was in the doorway. She had on wrinkled pink cotton, a two-piece nightie with panties like bloomers and a brief gathered top. Her face was nearly hidden by too much overcurled hair.

  “I’m looking for Dolores Hart,” Norma said.

  “No one here by that name,” the girl said.

  “We’re from Mount Loretto,” Norma told her.

  “Christ, come on in.”

  The apartment was one long room made into two by a bookcase and drapes that were tacked up. There was a bed at the windowless end and at the other end an old sofa with fat arms. The two windows above the sofa had roller shades with little nude plastic dolls tied to their draws.

  Norma explained quickly how she and Gainer happened to be there.

  “I’m not Dolores Hart,” the girl said. “I used to be but now I’m Vicky Harris.” She proved it with a social security card.

  A gray and white calico cat jumped up on the table for the single purpose of rubbing against Norma’s hand. It was encouraging.

  Vicky used a length of red Christmas ribbon to tie back her hair. Her face was round, her features indefinite, as though they hadn’t yet completely emerged. Her mouth promised to smile more than it did. “I’m eighteen,” she said, “actually … almost seventeen.”

  Gainer hadn’t said a word, not because he was timid or apprehensive, but because everything was talking to him. An emaciated geranium in an aluminum saucepan, an empty Modess box in a metal wastebasket that had on it a dented hunting dog holding a pheasant in its mouth, an ashtray used for a bowl to contain foil-covered Easter candies.

  Vicky made tea.

  The stove and refrigerator were in a closet that had no door. Vicky italicized the word borrowed when she said she’d borrowed tea and cups from where she worked. Substantial cups that clanged against one another when she handled them. “I have to be at work at four,” she said.

  Norma didn’t have to ask if they could stay.

  Vicky didn’t have to ask if they wanted to. She made up the sofa with one of the sheets and two of the pillows from her bed. In tune with Norma’s thoughts, she volunteered that the fellow who had been there was no one special. In other words, don’t worry, he wouldn’t be back that night.

  Norma and Gainer went to bed earlier than usual. With their heads at opposite ends, the sofa was roomy enough and its high back reinforced their sense of security. Norma lay there with tomorrow in mind. No matter what she tried to put into tomorrow it seemed empty. Gainer propped his pillow against the sofa’s fat arm and thumbed through magazines, recent issues of Harper’s Bazaar and an August 1933 National Geographic. When the light was turned off he scrunched down and hugged Norma’s feet.

  The following day Vicky had more vitality, more to offer, as though she’d been regenerated. She gave advice like an old-timer who’d been through it. She told Norma: “The worst problem is age. You can’t be sixteen.”

  “But that’s what I am.”

  “Everyone thinks a sixteen-year-old out on her own is an easy hustle. Can’t have experience, can’t be reliable. You got to be eighteen at least, not just say you’re eighteen but look it.”

  The transformation took three days.

  Norma, at Vicky’s suggestion, went down to Thirty-fourth Street to a school for hairdressers. The students needed practice. Norma managed to get with the swishiest one there, a young man who at once became a confidante and conspirator. Norma didn’t understand all that he chattered on about and none of the jargon, but she made it seem that she did. He snipped her plain long hair away a little at a time, using a style in Harper’s Bazaar for reference. He also insisted on doing Norma’s make-up and when he was through he appreciated his work so much he was carried further, shoved all sorts of cosmetic devices into her handbag.

  That same night she went blond.

  Did it herself with Gainer looking on. She read the Clairol directions, closed her eyes and applied. Didn’t face the mirror until she was done and then wasn’t sure she looked all that much older.

  “Do you think I look older?” she asked Gainer.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not just saying that?”

  He winked his best wicked wink at her.

  Then there were the mother’s things.

  Vicky went with Norma to get them. T
he Puerto Rican superintendent at the West End Avenue apartment building didn’t recognize Norma immediately, nor did he believe anything had been left in storage. Norma insisted. The superintendent muttered idiomatic Spanish obscenities that he was sure they didn’t understand as he opened the storage area and found two footlockers. Norma recalled there having been four. The superintendent turned resentful, as though he was being deprived. He left Norma and Vicky to cope with the heavy footlockers. They dragged and shoved more than carried them out to the sidewalk.

  Four available taxis wanted nothing to do with them. Vicky walked down a block and got one. The driver was an older Irishman with a whiskey complexion. Not a word of complaint from him about the footlockers and he even helped carry them in and up to Vicky’s place. He was redder in the face and puffing hard by the time he was done. Norma wished she could afford to give him more than a dollar tip but he looked into her eyes and saw that, and as though he had God’s ear, he told Him aloud to bless her.

  Norma hurried to have the footlockers open. But seeing their contents made her pause. Things she’d never realized occupied any corner of her memory now seemed so familiar, and evocative. What could be more inconsequential than a brown tweed skirt or a white ribbed sweater? Except that they had been hers, the mother’s, and although Norma couldn’t recall any particular instance when they had been worn by the mother, she still saw her in them.

  She handled all the mother’s things with great care at first, certainly with much more than they’d been packed with. As Norma removed layer after layer, the effect lessened.

  She tried some things on. They were only a bit large and long, could be made to fit. Vicky tried on a Bergdorf dress she loved but it was small for her, especially across the bust and hips, would never do.