Riverside Drive

by Laura Van Wormer

  —$5,000 after Daniel’s ex-wife’s and children’s pleas for help.

  And that was only the last year and a half.

  Mrs. Goldblum closed her eyes, choosing not to think back any further than that.

  Mrs. Goldblum flexed her hands. It was becoming a little more difficult to ignore these days, the arthritis. Particularly on humid days. It made one think in different terms. That is when they want you to go into a home, Mrs. Goldblum thought. When you speak of it taking sixteen and a half twists to open a six-ounce can of cat food.

  “What are you talking about, Mother?” Daniel had yelled on the phone.

  “About using the can opener, dear. About feeding Missy.”

  “Do you think I called all the way from Chicago to talk about a cat?”

  “I am simply answering your question, Daniel. You asked me how I am and I’m telling you how I am.”

  “You’re talking about can openers and cats!” he had cried.

  Rosanne breezed into the living room, breaking Mrs. Goldblum’s train of thought. “Before I forget again,” she said, holding out a large Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag, “Amanda bought the wrong kind of shower curtain and can’t return it and wondered if you’d like it.” She pulled it out of the bag for Mrs. Goldblum to see.

  It was a pale pink. Mrs. Goldblum liked it very much indeed and reached out to touch it. “Wasn’t that thoughtful of her.”

  “Well, I don’t know, Mrs. G. Seems to me if Amanda was thoughtful she wouldn’t always be buyin’ the wrong stuff. ‘Member when she gave me the watch? ‘Member?”

  “I’m not sure that I do,” Mrs. Goldblum said.

  “Aw, sure ya do, Mrs. G,” Rosanne said. “When I told her to get some Windex and she came back with a watch? This one?” She held up her wrist.

  “Oh, my, yes, now I recall,” Mrs. Goldblum chuckled.

  Rosanne watched her for a moment and then shrugged. “So, ya want me to hang this up?”

  “Would you, dear? Is that too much to ask? I do think it would look lovely in the bathroom. Don’t you agree?”

  Rosanne smiled at her. “Yeah, Mrs. G, I agree.”

  When Rosanne left, Mrs. Goldblum returned her attention to the desk.

  After a few moments of consideration she decided to file the letter in one of the pigeonholes and look at it again tomorrow.

  She heard soft purring. Missy was back, looking up into the eyes of her mistress with all the charm she possessed. It worked. Mrs. Goldblum picked her up, sat Missy in the lap of her dress and petted her. Within seconds, white hairs from Missy’s chest jumped to Mrs. Goldblum’s navy-blue dress. But not to worry, Mrs. Goldblum still had the Miracle Brush she had purchased at Woolworth’s some twenty years before.

  “Mrs. G, come see!” Rosanne was calling from the bathroom.

  “I have to go see Rosanne,” Mrs. Goldblum said, giving Missy a little shove. The cat jumped down and Mrs. Goldblum slowly, stiffly got up from the chair.

  “Mrs. G?”

  “I’m coming,” Mrs. Goldblum said, walking down the hall. She reached the bathroom door, held onto the molding and peeked in. “Oh, my goodness, isn’t it lovely.”

  “Yeah,” Rosanne said. In her hand she was holding the old shower curtain and liner.

  “But,” Mrs. Goldblum said, gesturing to the floor, “where did this rug come from?”

  “Oh, that,” Rosanne said, looking down under her feet.

  “It came with the shower curtain. You know, like it’s a set.” Pause. “It does kinda look good in here—made Amanda’s bathroom look like a whorehouse.”

  “Rosanne!”

  “House of ill repute.”

  Mrs. Goldblum looked concerned and touched at her glasses. “You don’t think...?”

  “Aw, no, Mrs. G. It looks great. Very feminine, Mrs. G. Very you,” she said with additional emphasis. “And did you see here? These little towels that match? And there’s a soap dish.”

  Mrs. Goldblum stepped in to feel one of the hand towels. “They are very pretty.”

  “Well,” Rosanne said, moving around Mrs. Goldblum, “I’m gonna chuck this thing.”

  Mrs. Goldblum caught her arm. “Oh, must we? Couldn’t we use it—”

  “Ya can’t use this thing for nothin’, Mrs. G,” Rosanne said, pulling the old shower curtain away from her. “It’s gonna walk on its own legs in a minute.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Goldblum said. She let go of Rosanne and refocused on the new shower curtain. “I must reimburse Amanda for these things.”

  “She said you’d say that,” Rosanne said. “So I’m supposed to tell ya that if you won’t just take ‘em, then she’ll just give’ em away to somebody else.”

  “Well then, I suppose I must accept them as a gift.”

  “I would if I were you,” Rosanne said, moving down the hall.

  “I shall write her a thank-you note,” Mrs. Goldblum decided, turning off the light in the bathroom. She walked slowly down the hall to the living room.

  “Hey, Mrs. G,” Rosanne called from the kitchen, “you oughtta come see this—the cat’s laughin’.”

  Mrs. Goldblum frowned slightly. “No, dear,” she said, “I believe it may be fur balls.”

  “Be what?”

  One second, two, three...

  Oh, yuck!”

  Mrs. Goldblum smiled as Missy came bounding into the living room, feeling much better now and quite ready to play.

  6

  THE KRANDELL ARMS HOTEL

  The Krandell Arms Hotel was on the city’s endangered species list. As a result, no matter how many millions of dollars the landlord could make—by converting the 104 “box” rooms, 16 communal bathrooms and 8 communal kitchens into 24 coop apartments—Mayor Koch wouldn’t let him. The Krandell Arms was a single-room-occupancy hotel, an SRO, and since it was located on 94th Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, it had earned the protection of the mayor by being in an SRO safety zone. The ban on SRO conversions in safety zones was temporary, but nonetheless a godsend, seeing as the only alternative for Manhattan’s poor was to move into the street or into an abandoned building—which was, incidentally, exactly how several thousands of people were living in Manhattan.

  In any event, it was a very confusing neighborhood that had sprung up around the Krandell Arms over the years. While the residents of the hotel paid between sixty and ninety dollars a week for a room, if they went outside, turned right and walked sixty feet, they would be standing in front of a building whose last one-bedroom apartment had been sold for two hundred thousand dollars. Or they could turn left and walk two blocks east to Broadway and look at the high-rise “luxury housing” that was being thrown up. Everywhere on Broadway, down was coming the granite, the genuine brick, the beautifully sculpted detail of the old buildings, and up, up, up—way up into the air—were going cinder blocks, brick veneer sheeting and brown metal windows in soul-sick repetition. Taken together, these skyscrapers of prefab horror were introducing a new community to the Upper West Side: HIGH-RISE LEVITTOWN.

  Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, The Gap, Pathmark—this was the scenic landscape of Broadway at 96th Street. And the high-rise Levittownians were paying upward of a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for the pleasure of viewing it.

  But then it had been years since the residents of the Krandell Arms had fully understood the ways of civilization.

  Rosanne arrived at the door of the Krandell Arms Hotel with two bags of groceries in her arms. As usual on a nice day, there were people hanging out in front, pulling on pint bottles of Thunderbird, smoking cigarettes and reefer, milling around, waiting for something to happen. And, as usual, nothing was happening, and some nameless creep was standing in Rosanne’s way, his hand outstretched, mumbling, “Canyousparesomechangenicelady?”

  “Shove off,” Rosanne said. When he failed to move (he was barely cognizant), Rosanne used her groceries as a shield to push her way past him.

  “Bless ya,” the creep said.

/>   The inner doors of the hotel were wide open, and Buzzy and Creature were hanging out in the hallway. They were high, Rosanne spotted right away, and so she knew to use Attitude B on them. (Attitude A was reserved for those times when they were straight—when Rosanne would treat them like the friends of her husband’s that they were.) “Hey, sistah,” Buzzy said, touching his leather hat. He was too wrecked to successfully execute the bow he wished to offer and staggered against the wall. He slapped the arm of his companion, who was already parked against the wall. “Man, Creatcha, did ya ever see such a fine piece of ass?”

  “Mess with me and I’ll kick your ass to New Jersey,” Rosanne said, craning her neck to see through the glass partition of the front desk.

  “Who-whooo!” the boys hooted, falling against each other.

  “Where the hell is Ernesto?” Rosanne demanded.

  “Man, I’d love to get my ass kicked by you, babe,” Buzzy said.

  A little black boy, about six, came skidding around the corner. He shot past the three, making for the front door, and he almost made it before Rosanne yelled, “James! Stop right there!”

  The boy stopped in his tracks. With his shoulders hunched, he slowly raised his hands over his head and turned around. “Got me,” he said. Buzzy and Creature thought this was great and started slapping their legs and “Who-whooo” -ing again.

  “Come here,” Rosanne demanded.

  James dropped his head and shuffled back in her direction. Rosanne sighed and kneeled to put the bags of groceries down. Still kneeling, she reached for James and pulled him close. James let his hand be held and, after a moment, looked up at Rosanne. “Why aren’t you at school?” Rosanne asked, her voice decidedly more gentle.

  James looked past Rosanne to the wall. “I’m sick. I got a fever.”

  Rosanne felt the little boy’s forehead. “Well, you don’t anymore.” She started tucking his shirt into his jeans. “Is your mother home?” James shook his head. Buzzy and Creature started pitching pennies. Rosanne licked her thumb and wiped at the unidentifiable food stain on the corner of James’s mouth. “Who’s staying with you?”

  “Nobody,” James said, looking at the wall again.

  “Where’s your mommy?”

  “Work.”

  Rosanne stroked the top of James’s head once, sighed and gathered her bags. “Why don’t you come upstairs with me and I’ll fix you a nice sandwich. Would you like that?”

  “Okay,” James said.

  Rosanne led James down the corridor to the elevator. The elevator took forever to come. But at least it came, which was more than yesterday. They got off on the seventh floor, where the smell of garlic assaulted them. The seventh-floor hall ran square, and the noise from the rooms echoed along the bare walls and linoleum floors-around and around and around-until they blended together into one garbled torrent of sound.

  Most of the doors on the hallway were open, and residents could be seen sitting around inside. Rosanne and James passed the kitchen where someone’s unattended endeavor was spilling liquid all over the stove top. Rosanne shifted her groceries and turned the burner off.

  The DiSantos door was open too, which meant that Frank was home. Rosanne pushed it open with her foot and went inside. Frank was lying on the bed, watching TV. Beside him, on the floor, were two crushed Old English cans. “I brought a guest,” Rosanne said, dropping the bags on the table. “You know James, Frank.”

  Frank, eyes still on the TV, said, “Hi, kid.”

  James ran over and hung on Rosanne’s leg. “Here,” Rosanne said, prying him loose, “you sit here.” She pulled out a chair from the table. “I thought you were workin’ today,” she said, moving back to close the door.

  “They didn’t have nothin’ for me today. Tomorrow, they said.” His eyes didn’t leave the screen.

  Rosanne went over and kissed him on the forehead. “What are you watchin’?”

  “Some shit,” he said.

  Rosanne moved back to the table and started unloading groceries. To James, “How about a nice ham sandwich?” He nodded vigorously. To Frank, as she made the sandwich for James, “I thought we’d have a steak tonight.”

  “I’m going out.”

  “You have to eat—”

  “I’m eatin’ out.”

  “Okay,” Rosanne said, cutting James’s sandwich into fours on a plate and pushing it in front of him. When James reached for it, Rosanne caught him by the wrist. She nodded toward the sink. “Wash your hands first, okay?” While James made a halfhearted attempt at fulfilling this request, Rosanne poured him a glass of milk. Under Rosanne’s direction, Frank had built an intricate system of shelves on one wall, the bottom part of which was made up of locked cabinets. It was in these cabinets that the refrigerator, the microwave and other illegal appliances were kept concealed.

  When James was well into his sandwich, Rosanne moved toward the door. “Frank, keep an eye on James, will you? I’ll be back in a minute.” At this, Frank tore his eyes away from the set to glance at the kid. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

  Rosanne walked down the corridor and around the corner to Ceily’s room. Although the door was closed, Rosanne could hear darn well what was going on behind it.

  “Oh, baby, oh, baby, oh, baby,” Ceily was saying. (Ceily said that her act for her clients was patterned after Sophia Loren’s portrayal of grief in some movie she once saw—”Oh, not my baby, not my baby, please, not my baby.”)

  “I’ve got James at my place!” Rosanne shouted through the door. Back in the DiSantoses’ room, James was now sitting on the floor, watching TV with Frank. “I saw Sissy on the comer this morning,” Rosanne said to her husband, carefully stepping over James to get to the closet. “Did you see her?” Rosanne reached up to the shelf of the closet and brought down a plastic action-doll of the Hulk. “Frank?”

  “Yeah, I saw her. She looks like shit.”

  “James,” Rosanne said. The little boy looked up. “This belongs to Jason, but you can play with it while you’re here.” His eyes widened and Rosanne smiled. She handed it to him. “I thought she was in Veritas Villa,” Rosanne said, moving back to the table.

  No response. Rosanne opened a bottle of Slice and poured herself a glass.

  Of course it was pointless to pursue the topic of Sissy. Sissy, when on the up-and-up, was Frank’s most generous source of drugs.

  Rosanne sat down at the table and for a few minutes watched James play with the Hulk. Then she looked at her husband. Frank was still a good looking man—if he dressed, if he shaved, if he showered, if he was straight.

  Rosanne Minero had been fifteen years old when her family was invited to a welcome-home party for their next door neighbors’ son. Any excuse for getting out of the house in those days was good enough for Rosanne, and she went to the party, holding her latest baby brother in her arms and leading four more of her younger siblings.

  The second Rosanne saw Frank DiSantos, she was in love. He was just home from Vietnam, still in uniform, and was wearing several medals. He was handsome and he was proud, and he flashed a smile in Rosanne’s direction and nodded, as if to tip her off that he found her attractive. And she was—though no one, at first meeting, would have thought she was any younger than, say, twenty-three or so. A young life spent cleaning and cooking and changing diapers and mothering had already robbed Rosanne of the gifts of childhood. (“Lean and mean,” Frank would say.)

  Later, when the throng of DiSantos relatives had touched and kissed Frank enough, when the toasts of the best Detroit homemade wine had tapered off, Frank had taken Rosanne aside to tell her of his plans. Of the car dealership he would open with two of his buddies from the war. Of the car he himself would own (a Porsche), of the house he would buy, of his (after living a little) intention of marrying and raising children, at least one of whom would grow up to be the President of the United States. And then he told her, in a hoarse whisper of blatant sexuality (which he offered in such a way as not to sully the ears of the four-month-old
in Rosanne’s arms), of his need, right now, right this moment, for a “good” woman to welcome him home from the war.

  Fifteen-year-old Rosanne Minero and twenty-three-year-old Frank DiSantos were married three months later. They moved to New York, into a nice apartment in the Bronx, and they were extremely happy—until the night Rosanne discovered that her husband had brought another friend home from the war with him. The friend’s name was Heroin. When his addiction seemed to be as harmless as Frank said it was, when Frank opened his car dealership with his buddies, when Frank continued to be the sweetest, nicest guy in the world, Rosanne learned to accommodate it.

  Two years later, in 1977, Frank sold his interest in the dealership to support the DiSantoses’—and the DiSantoses’ friend. In 1978, Frank went into the VA Hospital in Manhattan and entered their methadone treatment. In 1979, he kicked methadone and got a job as a mechanic in a West Side garage in Manhattan. He did very well, and Rosanne, who had been employed as a housekeeper in the Windercolt mansion on Gracie Square, also had money coming in. In 1980 the DiSantoses lucked into a lovely Manhattan apartment in the West 70S. Shortly thereafter, appearing as a miracle to Frank, Rosanne announced she was pregnant. (It was no miracle to Rosanne—she had simply stopped using the birth control pills she had been taking during the “bad” years.)

  Jason was born on April 19, 1981. On May 1, 1981, Frank was fired from the garage for stealing and Rosanne knew in her heart that he was on drugs again. He lost a series of jobs thereafter and, in 1983, Frank was admitted to the VA again for heroin. Rosanne, with Jason in her arms, four months’ back rent to pay, no income and a pride that kept her from going to her family, applied for, and received, residence in the Krandell Arms Hotel.

  It was temporary, Rosanne assured Frank when he got out of the VA, and they would move as soon as he was back on his feet. Why she had assured him of this—when she herself was sick and horrified at the environment to which she had brought her child—she never quite understood.

  Frank never did get back on his feet. Instead of his old drive and energy and dreams, he seemed to grow more depressed and listless by the day. So Rosanne did the only thing she could think of. She found a young mother on West End Avenue who would look after Jason for a few hours a day, five days a week, leaving Rosanne free to clean apartments on Riverside Drive. (She wanted a view of the river.) It not only brought in the cash the DiSantoses were desperate for, but it also allowed Rosanne to stay near Jason and near to Frank, who, at this point, needed someone close by when he “got in trouble.” It also gave Rosanne a few hours’ respite from a life that felt like it was choking her to death.