What was it about leather that made his son so agitated? The sheer animal smell. Alex stared, fascinated, as the seconds changed disquietingly before his eyes. It was—no mistake about it—the exact time. Never a little earlier or later. This was time out of context.
“Listen.” Ralph touched something on the watch and a tinny voice said, “The time is now one twenty-three and fifty-nine seconds…”
“Fine, fine. Shhh. It’s wonderful, thanks. Excuse me,” Alex said to the voice as he sealed it into the gift box.
Throughout the meal he was imagining the numbers changing relentlessly beneath the fuchsia wrapping paper.
Ralph brought up the forthcoming tenant demonstration at City Hall. “Stay away, Pop. There could be trouble.”
“Amalie Price is our leader.” Alex relished the sound of her name.
“I’m just trying to protect you.” Ralph poked at his tiramisu as though a microphone might be concealed in it.
The man twisting balloons into grotesque shapes came to their table but Alex waved him away. “I already got my present.” He imagined the electronic voice telling him in no uncertain terms that his life was ebbing—as though he didn’t already know it.
#
When Amalie returned home late Monday night after the trip to Vermont she found a sprig of freesia and a note from Charlie. Mom. I bought these to cheer you up. My friend is coming sometime tonight but I told her not to ring the bell.
Charlie’s light was on and his door open, but he was asleep on the floor in his clothes. No more coffee cans or praying mantises. He must have gathered them up and taken them to Central Park. The bed had been freshly made, the comforter turned down for his guest. Who was it tonight? The fourteen-year-old who was disowned by her parents and hitched around the country, with time off for two abortions? Or the sixteen-year-old who was forcibly institutionalized by her parents and escaped by sliding down a rope? Months earlier Charlie had warned Amalie to pretend to know nothing if someone called and asked about the girl’s whereabouts. But she didn’t know where the girl was and preferred it that way, so would he please stop telling her all about the girl’s bourgeois parents and her specific itinerary after escaping from Rockland State?
The girls flocked to Charlie. He was his father’s son. But Amalie suspected that there wasn’t much sex in his life since he had read somewhere that emission of semen results in the loss of potassium.
Charlie stirred and moved his arm in a wide arc, as though demonstrating the scope of possibilities open to him. Remembering the freesia, Amalie wrote him a note. Dear comfort of my old age. Now I believe in the harmony of the universe. I am off from work tomorrow (today? Tuesday) so don’t make noise.
She was dreaming about reading Gogol in Russian when she heard the ringing of bells. Troika bells in the middle of summer? She opened her eyes. Three a.m. and the phone was ringing. That caller again? She picked up the receiver and held her breath.
A man’s voice said, “Amalie? Amalie Price?” It sounded just like Ed Fielding.
“Ed?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“Do you know what time it is?” It was pitch dark outside.
“That’s why I’m calling,” he said quickly. “It’s three o’clock and I don’t know where my daughter is. No joke.” He had already called everyone he could think of. Then it occurred to him that Amalie’s son might have an idea of where a sixteen-year-old girl might go. He’d come home from the Vermont trip and found his wife and daughter in the midst of a ferocious fight. When he tried to intervene Ellen had run out of the house. A girl that age wandering around in the middle of the night. His wife was sure she’d been kidnapped by a pimp at the Port Authority bus terminal. “I told her it was crazy to think like that but who knows.”
“Of course it’s crazy,” Amalie said firmly, though it sounded perfectly plausible to her. The girl had probably gone to a friend’s house to cool off. Easy to dispense wisdom about someone else’s child, she thought. She would ask Charlie, though as far as she knew he’d never mentioned anyone called Ellen. The truth was that she could never remember the names of his friends, which enraged him.
Charlie’s door was closed now and no light was showing. There was a backpack on the floor in the hallway. His friend must have arrived after Amalie fell asleep. She hesitated before going into his room. To awaken a sleeping child (or children?) has to be one of the crueler acts in life.
She returned to the phone. “I’ll have to call you back. This will take a little time. What does Ellen look like? I don’t remember the photo too well.” She didn’t mention Charlie’s guest.
“Tall and skinny, fair wavy hair. She irons it every Saturday. To me she’s very pretty but that’s a father talking.”
As she hung up she heard Charlie in the hall. He was on his way back to his room, holding a glass of water.
“Honey, wait a second.” Amalie put out her hand.
“Tired. Friend’s thirsty.” Charlie’s eyes were barely open.
“Charlie, listen to me. Is your friend’s name Ellen Fielding?”
Charlie opened his eyes wide. “What? Her name is Endive—pronounced the French way. G’night.”
“I have to see her. Just for a moment. I won’t turn on the light. I have my little penlight.”
“That’s crazy, Mom. My room is private. You don’t just walk into a bedroom. I never did that to you.” He went back into his room and shut the door.
Now what? Should she have insisted? Certainly not. But she put herself in Ed’s place. She rang him, hoping his wife wouldn’t answer.
“Yes?”
Amalie could hear his dread. Perhaps he was expecting a call from the police. She knew what that was like. “It’s me. Does your daughter have a nickname?” Amalie explained about Charlie’s guest and her reluctance to barge into the room.
“Endive? Jesus, what a dumb name. I never heard anyone call her that, not even her most spaced-out friends.”
“Does she own a red backpack?”
“I have no idea. Her room is full of bags, hers, her friends’. They’re always swapping. Carol—” he called to his wife, “did Ellen—it’s Amalie Price. Amalie Price from work…I certainly have mentioned her name before, Carol. Please. Did Ellen have a red bag?” Pause. “My wife doesn’t know. Maybe if I came over—no, that doesn’t make sense.”
Amalie had an idea. She could leave a note in the bathroom asking if the girl’s name was Ellen and if so, to please call home. “I know I’m being a coward by not going into his room but I don’t want to mess things up between Charlie and me.” But then hearing how frantic Ed was, she said, “Okay, I’ll do it, I’ll go in there. This is more important.”
“No, don’t. It’s such a remote possibility. I think your idea of a note is good. Maybe you’ll be up before her, then you’ll be able to see.”
For the rest of the night Amalie tried to keep herself awake but at ten she awoke with a jolt. There was raga music playing and a heavy smell of wet plaster.
Charlie was in the kitchen wrapped in a towel, having just come out of one of his forty-five-minute showers that left paint peeling and tiles dislodged. There were pockmarks on the ceiling and puddles on the floor, left to dry naturally. The room was filled with a heavy mist since Charlie made sure to combine a shower with a steam bath. “Gets the poisons out,” he always said, though where he had become so contaminated, Amalie had no idea. Now he stood in front of her, hair streaming, detoxified until tomorrow.
“How was Vermont?” he asked conversationally.
“Very beautiful, very quiet. Charlie—”
“See how friendly everybody is. Not like here. Could we get a jeep?”
“Sweetie, nothing’s been decided. I have to think about it. Now about your friend—”
“She had to leave. I took down your note.”
The phone rang and Charlie answered it, walking restlessly back and forth until the cord was wrapped around his body, a young Laacoon’s. “…Oka
y, I’ll distribute them from the Drive to Amsterdam. You take Columbus to Central Park West.”
Now what was he hatching? Amalie had to get on the phone to call Ed and then needed to make a series of calls to finalize the plan for the tenant demonstration which was only three days away. “Charlie, I have to talk to you.”
“Excuse me, mother, but I am on the phone.”
“This is urgent.”
“So’s this—yeah—don’t let the cops see you.”
“Was it Ellen Fielding or not?” she demanded when he was off the phone.
“I’m taking the Fifth.” he said solemnly. “I can’t betray a friend. I’m not saying it was her—she. But just theoretically—”
“This isn’t theoretical. If it is Ellen Fielding her parents are sick with worry. They’re not evil people.”
“No. That class of people are just incredibly conven-tional.”
Amalie hated that self-righteous tone of his. But she was determined to keep her temper down. “I understand that it’s a question of loyalty to your friend,” she said. “But you have to understand—” Amalie swallowed “—where I’m coming from. If you disappeared from home in a huff and I didn’t know where you were, wouldn’t I be frantic? Like I was a couple of weeks ago? It was bad enough having to track you down at Criminal Court.”
“That was different. It wasn’t for personal reasons. God, look at the color of these flowers.” Charlie touched a stalk of the freesia. “Purple is the most serious color.”
“What am I supposed to tell Ed Fielding now?”
“Is he an all right dude?”
“Yes. More than all right. He’s the chief editor where I work. Charlie, you are being recalcitrant on the basis of an abstract principle.” Amalie was counting on the shock value of “recalcitrant.”
“Principle is extremely important to me,” he said stiffly. “Dad always talked about principle.”
Amalie wasn’t having any of that. “I’m asking you to put yourself in the position of a parent.”
Suddenly his chin trembled. “Listen, listen—I have to tell you something. You’re not going to like this.” His towel was coming loose, slipping below his neat umbilicus, their last link.
“Why don’t you put on something first.”
“You’re always changing the subject.” Charlie stomped out and returned soon after, dressed. “You remember my friend Endive?”
“How could I? I never met her.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot. She—she’s in trouble.”
Drugs? Theft? Amalie took a wild stab. “She’s pregnant.”
He nodded, upset. “Her parents would freak out if they knew.”
The phone again. Ed.
“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you—” Amalie started to apologize.
“It’s okay. She’s home, in one piece. Spent the night at a friend’s, probably sleeping on the floor. That’s what they do, these crazy kids.” Not in this house, Amalie thought. Clean sheets and fluffy comforters. Ed’s turn now to apologize. “It was a false alarm.” Maybe yes, maybe no, Amalie thought, hanging up.
“Okay Charlie, this is serious business. Is your Endive’s last name Fielding?”
“Why should I tell you. You might go and tell her parents.”
“Charlie, are you—who’s the father of this child? I mean of this child’s child.”
“I don’t know,” he said miserably. “I always thought the woman always knows who the father is. We only did it twice.”
“Spare me the details. How far gone is she?”
“She skipped a period.”
“Then there’s no problem.” Amalie was relieved. “She can get an abortion.”
“Oh no,” Charlie said, shocked. “That’s out of the question. She wants the kid. And I agree. How can you kill a human being?”
“You’re crazy, you know that?” Amalie shouted suddenly. “We’re talking about a bunch of slimy cells.”
“Would you say that if it was your grandchild?” he shouted back.
“Yes! A hundred times, yes. I’m too young to be a grandmother. You have to convince her. Someone has to. Her parents.”
“They’d kill her if they knew. They’re very bourgeois. Not like you and dad.”
“Thanks a lot.” Ed didn’t exactly fit the bourgeois description as she understood it.
“She’s going to need a place to stay when she starts getting fat,” Charlie said.
Oh, that too. The Amalie Price home for wayward teenagers. “Honey, I think it’s commendable to help out a friend,” she said carefully. “But you’re probably not to blame so why assume the responsibility?”
“She’s counting on me. She’s scared to tell her folks.”
“Well, tough—” dropping all pretense at objectivity. “I can’t harbor a girl here under those conditions.” A girl who may be carrying my grandchild, a miniature Stewart perhaps.
“Dad would have said yes right away.”
“Oh, he would even have helped deliver the child and made a movie of it at the same time.” Even in death Stewart was still the hero, Amalie the heavy. Bad enough that he was the one who bought the treats and took Charlie to special places—a coal dumper in Bayonne, the Great Swamp. Not like boring old mom who could barely make it to the playground. Cut another notch in the tree, not the kind that celebrates growth, but rather the kind that digs into it in preparation for its fall.
“God, you’re so hard hearted,” Charlie said. “Don’t you love little babies? They’re so innocent.”
“Innocent, my foot. They’re fiendishly clever. Your N-Dive can’t stay here and that’s that.”
“It’s my house too, you know.”
“To reiterate: I pay the rent.” Amalie’s ultimate weapon.
Charlie thought for a moment. “Okay, I guess I’ll tell her that.” He seemed relieved. “Thanks anyway.”
“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” Amalie said, amazed at his turnaround. It just couldn’t be true. She would try not to think about it. Compartmentalize, like men did. Little slots in the mind for different areas of life, with no overlap.
“Say, those flowers you bought are really beautiful, sweetie.” She inhaled their exquisite smell. “Now, about the demonstration on Friday at City Hall…” She had to pin Charlie down because she might need his help. Many of the tenants in the building had promised to be there. Alex declined, however. He would hold the fort, crumbling though it was. Amalie was worried about having to take Friday off. She’d call in sick. But why should she worry about it. Her days at Berger MicroPubs were probably numbered. She was going to start checking the ads again.
“Maybe I’ll be at the rally,” Charlie said. “But maybe not. On the other hand, I probably will be.”
His indecision was maddening. He couldn’t ever commit to a specific time for anything in advance, though he seemed to be embracing fatherhood, all right. (Oh oh, that compartment had a leak in it.) Charlie always needed an out. One never knew when something more important might come along. The few times the whole family was obliged to be somewhere were an ordeal. He always kept his parents waiting and it was a relief to be able to say, when he was old enough, “Meet us there.” The one time they had tickets to a play, he sauntered in during the second scene.
“Just say yes or no,” Amalie said. “Will you leave with me promptly at ten a.m. or not?”
“What’s the big deal about ten a.m.?”
“The big deal is that there may be changes in the line of march or we may need you for something else—to be a marshal, for example. Don’t give me a hard time. Can I count on you, yes or no?”
“What are you so uptight about? Think positively.”
“I am thinking positively. I’m thinking that I positively cannot stand your indecision.”
“You’re not exactly storming the Pentagon—yeah, yeah I know you went down to DC during Vietnam.”
“A tenant march is small potatoes to you, isn’t it.”
“I didn’t s
ay it, you did.”
“Oh God, wait till you’re a parent.”
Charlie gave her a crooked smile. “Maybe sooner than you think.”
Chapter 10
On Friday morning, just before leaving for the rally at City Hall, Amalie remembered to call in sick at the office. “Oh hon,” the receptionist said, “I know how it is sometimes. Getting out of bed in the morning is a lousy way to start the day. I’ll tell her you have a flu.”
In the lobby where the tenants were milling around, Mrs. Konarski was declining to leave her dog Genghis Khan behind.
“And suppose he leaves a load on the steps of City Hall?” 2D asked.
“There’s so much crap at City Hall already, it won’t make a difference,” Rosetta Fineman said. “Ethan, what kind of sign is that, ‘My Math Teacher Sucks’? Have a little respect.”
The grass ruts kid had appeared and was attempting to address the tenants through a bullhorn even though they were few in number. He was exhorting them to chain themselves to the police barricades. Several tenants went back upstairs and refused to take part in the demonstration.
“We didn’t ask for outside help,” Amalie told the student angrily.
“But you want to do this professionally, don’t you?”
She thrust some leaflets at him (“Tenants Si, Landlords, No,” addresses of local legislators, which bills to support). He looked puzzled. “This is an outreach program to establish a proactive dialectic with the disenfranchised,” Amalie explained. Ah—now he understood.
Several tenant groups had already assembled at City Hall Park when Amalie’s contingent arrived. Despite the drizzle the atmosphere was festive. There were balloons and banners in many languages, representing neighborhoods all over the city. A handful of tourists wearing unbelievably clean pastels stared dully from behind the wooden barricades.
“What’s the matter, you stupids.” Mrs. Konarski shook her sign (SAVE RENT CONTROL). “They don’t teach you to read in Myina-swota?” Her dog yapped encouragingly. He had ridden downtown inside her ruffled blouse and then leaped out at the subway station.
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