by Jack Finney
I had to laugh at that, silently, and I dropped my hand; but it worried me. Yet it was a fact that I needn't even encounter Pickering in the morning. I could wait to come downstairs till he'd left the house, and then never see him face to face again. As for Julia—well, what about Julia? After a few moments I nodded; in a way I wasn't able to analyze, I was somehow involved with her, too. But that didn't matter, either; we were of separate times, and I'd be leaving hers very soon.
I tested something; I thought about Kate, and stood there in the dark examining my feelings about her. Nothing had changed. As soon as I returned, I knew I'd want to see her, and I felt a sense of relief, and then started to wonder about that. Instead, I turned away from the window, unbuttoning my shirt—it buttoned only partway down, the lower part being a single wide shirttail—undressed, and got into my nightgown. Lying in bed, I smiled; it had been quite a day. Then, within a minute or so, I fell asleep, knowing I might be terribly wrong to stay here but knowing also that I was going to; that I had to see what happened in City Hall Park at half past twelve, Thursday, January 26, 1882—tomorrow.
13
I had breakfast alone in the morning, all the other boarders gone. I'd lain in bed listening for them, counting them off as they'd come down the hall and gone down the stairs, all within a few minutes of each other. Then I'd dressed, and sat watching by my window till I actually saw Jake Pickering leave.
Walking into the parlor now, I saw that it was swept and dusted, and I turned to look at the windows. They were almost entirely clear, wiped or washed clean of frost and drawings both, a new film of frost beginning to creep up the glass again. Turning toward the dining room, I wondered again if I could have avoided the trouble last night. No, and now in the daylight I saw that it didn't matter as much as I'd thought. A man so jealous that a casual stranger evokes it must have done other similar things and would do them again. I hadn't really interfered with the past; something of the sort would sooner or later have happened anyway involving someone else, if I hadn't been here.
I sat down at the long dining-room table, and Aunt Ada—listening for me, I think—came in from the kitchen wearing her working clothes: a plain dark cotton dress and a white bib-apron tied in a big bow at the back. She welcomed me, very sweetly and genuinely, asking how I'd slept and if my room were satisfactory. Then, still smiling, anxious not to offend me, she said this was the only morning I could expect breakfast after eight, and I said I'd either get down earlier or do without.
She served breakfast then: a fried chop, fried eggs, toast with three kinds of jam, coffee, and the morning Times. Setting these down on the table while I watched, she glanced at me, hesitated, and then—genuinely anxious about my welfare—suggested that if I were looking for work I ought to begin getting up earlier. With the backs of her fingers she felt the base of the silver coffeepot which she'd set onto a thick knitted square, then filled my cup and left, and I opened the Times, and began to eat.
The big story of the day was GUITEAU FOUND GUILTY, in the left-hand column of the front page, but I skipped that and read the fourth-column story, THE CHOCTAW RAILWAY GRANT. HOW GOULD AND HUNTINGTON HAVE KILLED OFF COMPETITION WITH THEIR NEWLY ACQUIRED ROAD, though it was a little hard to follow. I did get the idea, though, that a group of "alleged representatives of the Indians," who didn't want a railroad run through their land, was soon replaced by "accredited representatives," who thought it was a great idea.
And I was fascinated by ARCHBISHOP PURCELL'S DEBT, just below the Choctaw story. For reasons the Times didn't explain—it seemed to be a continuing story, and I think you were assumed to have previous knowledge of it—Archbishop Purcell apparently had five thousand creditors claiming he owed them $4,000,000 and there was some prospect that to settle these claims a number of "houses of worship would ... be sold to the highest bidder." Cardinal McCloskey seemed upset, to say nothing of the congregations, and the Times said, "The case is now ready for trial, and will be one of the most interesting in the history of American jurisprudence," and I thought so, too.
Eating my toast and sipping coffee, I was reading a McCreery's ad for "evening shades of Nun's Veiling in white, cream, light blue, ivory, and pink" when Julia came downstairs. We said good-morning as she passed through the dining room; then, as she carried in her own breakfast from the kitchen, I had time to look at her. Today her hair was wound into a soft coil piled on her head, and I thought possibly, though I wasn't sure, that she was wearing makeup or at least powder. Watching her, I realized that she was dressed to go out, in a marvelous dress of purple velvet, the skirt gathered up at the front in a series of scallops, and trimmed at the front just below the waist with a lavender bow that must have been eight inches across. And it had a bustle.
But if that dress sounds ridiculous, it was not; she looked great, and I had to recognize as she sat down, picking up her napkin, smiling at me, that every needle on every dial was jumping, and that maybe Jake Pickering hadn't been entirely mistaken last night. I could smile at myself, though, accepting the fact of this girl's appeal clinically and with detachment, because it didn't matter; in a few hours I'd be gone. "I see you are consulting the advertising pages," Julia said conversationally.
I'd already decided I'd better get out of the house for the rest of the morning, so just for a reply I said, "Yes, I need some new clothes."
She smiled. "Well! You'll be a hummer with new duds! I had noticed that you brought very little."
I couldn't resist. "Most of my clothes would look a little strange here. Can you suggest a good store?"
Bringing a piece of toast with her, Julia got up, came around to my side of the table, and began turning the pages of my paper, scanning the ads, while I sat back watching her. She moved gracefully, her fingers quick and accurate in taking the page corners. She stopped at a page nearly filled with ads, leaning forward over the table beside me, to search through them. And—this was absurd, I thought, a poor joke on me carried on too long—there was a perfumed scent from her, from her hair, I think, and I felt a flare of excitement so intense it affected my vision, piling up behind my eyeballs, and I leaned away to one side.
All the ads were one column wide and set completely in type, and now Julia said, "Here," her fingertip touching one of them. "Macy's has some gentlemen's clothing for sale." Trying to ignore the perfume, I leaned closer to read the ad; it said Macy's was selling shirts made to order at ninety-nine cents, which sounded ridiculously low but which I knew was not in a place and time where an able-bodied unskilled man earned two dollars for a day's work of twelve hours. Collars were six and eight cents, said the ad, cotton half-hose eighteen cents a pair. When I reached the bottom of the ad and read, "Our customers may rest assured that we will not be undersold by any other house," I felt a little stab of pleasure at this ancestor of Macy's familiar slogan.
"Or you can go to Rogers Peet," Julia said, turning to look at me; our faces were only inches apart, and she stood quickly erect. "They have a brand-new and larger store," she said, walking back to her side of the table, "and will surely have whatever you need." There was a cool note of dismissal in her voice, and I thought I understood; a man's clothing was a subject too intimate for lengthy discussion. I said, "Okay, I'll try Rogers Peet"—people did say "okay," I'd noticed last night—and picked up my coffee cup for a final sip, and to put a period to the subject.
And as I raised my cup, Julia saw my hand. It wasn't so red this morning but it was bruised blue at the middle knuckle and even more swollen than last night. She stared but said nothing—I think she knew or guessed the cause; maybe Pickering had done this before—and her face flushed. I didn't know why for a moment, then I saw her eyes: She was furious. She looked from my hand to my face. "Do you know where Rogers Peet is?" she said very quietly. I could only say no. "It's at Broadway and Prince Street, opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, and if you've never been in New York before, you don't know where that is, either." It was true, at least, that I didn't know where Prince Street was,
and I'd certainly never heard of the Metropolitan Hotel. I shook my head. Julia nodded, and stood up. "Well, I'm going to the Ladies' Mile," she said, "and I'll take you." I began shaking my head quickly, hunting for a reason to say no, and she watched me for a moment, then said softly, "Are you worried about Jake?"
"No, I'm not worried about Jake. But he did say 'fiancée.' "
"Yes." Julia stood staring past me. "And has said it before." She looked at me again. "But as I have said to him, I am no one's fiancée until I've said that I am. And I haven't done so yet." She turned toward the living room and the closet in the hallway. "Are you coming?"
I knew I wasn't going to say no and let her think Jake had scared me off. And if I was going to say yes I thought I ought to sound as though I meant it. "You bet!" I said, something else I'd heard more than once last night, and I went upstairs to get my hat and overcoat. In my room I took a small sketch pad from my bag and a couple of pencils, one hard and one soft. I caught a glimpse of my own movement in the dresser mirror, and looked quickly at my face. It was pleased and excited, emotion ignoring logic, and I shrugged; events had simply picked me up and carried me along, and if I couldn't help it I thought I might as well enjoy it.
Julia was waiting in the hall in a flowered bonnet tied under her chin, a dark-green coat, and a short black shoulder cape, wearing a tiny black fur muff shoved up onto one wrist. When she heard my step she looked up and smiled, looking great, and I could only grin and shake my head.
Lord help us all, what New York City has lost through the years! We walked north to Twenty-third Street, Julia eager and excited; she was about to show me the sights and was enjoying it, and I felt touched, she seemed so innocent. At Twenty-third we turned west toward Madison Square and the Fifth Avenue Hotel a couple of blocks ahead at Broadway and Fifth, the beginning, Julia said, of "the Ladies' Mile." Suddenly I said, "Oh!"—an involuntary sound of pure delight at what I saw ahead—and Julia turned her head to search my face, smiling at the intended effect.
To me, living and working in New York City, Madison Square had meant very little; a sun-dried, brown-grassed emptiness of park benches and paths in the summer, filled only at noon, with office workers moodily eating lunches from paper bags, deserted much of the rest of the time except for a few derelicts; in the winter even dirtier, emptier, and more forelorn; and at night in all seasons automatically avoided like every other New York park. At most it provided the relief of empty space from the miles all around it of narrow corridor-streets between high building walls. It didn't seem to have much other meaning or purpose: a drab and pleasureless place.
But now at the sight of it I exclaimed in simple delight, because the square ahead was alive and a joy. Under the winter trees and still-glowing gas mantles were countless children: girls in bonnets tied on with shawls; boys in square little lamb's-wool caps with attached earmuffs; girls and boys in pompommed tam-o'-shanters with plaid bands and ribbons down the back; boys in miniature long-pants suits with heavy mufflers around the neck; girls in long shaggy fur coats; everyone in boots or button shoes, half the girls wearing brightly striped stockings, some of them carrying tiny muffs. Strange little winter outfits, but they were still children in the snow, running, falling, throwing, dragging each other on high wooden sleighs whose runners curved gracefully up into bird's-head ornaments, belly-flopping onto low wooden-runnered sleds. On the paths nannies walked in nurselike outfits pushing baby carriages with tall wooden-spoke wheels. And adults were strolling, just strolling through Madison Square, the snow, and the winter for the simple pleasure of it as though being outdoors were something to be enjoyed for itself. Dogs barked, romped, rolled, and cavorted, excited by the snap in the air and the snow. And all around that living, moving square rolled the most glittering parade of carriages you could hope to see.
These weren't just black. There were marvelous rich maroons among them, a deep olive-green, and one had a magnificent body of canary-yellow, the wheels and fenders shiny black. Most were enclosed but a few were actually open, and Julia named some of them: fine names like Victorias, five-glassed landaus, barouches, phaetons, and light rockaways. Liveried men drove them, top hats taking and revolving the light, polished boots and white pants displayed under the buttoned-back skirts of silver-buttoned outer coats, which in some instances matched the carriage bodies in color. On more than one, carriage footmen, often a pair of them, sat up behind, arms folded in splendid uselessness.
And the horses pranced, slim and magnificent, their harnesses and curried bodies shining, heads reined high, manes braided, knees lifting to chests; a lot of them were in matched absolutely identical pairs: black, brown, gray, white. And inside those carriages sat the most stylish, splendid, exciting-to-look-at women I'd ever seen. They were going shopping after a few turns around the square, Julia said—along the Ladies' Mile that stretched down Broadway to the south.
We were closer now, and I grinned with pleasure to see that these weren't like the women who sit back, obscure and hidden, almost cowering into the deep corners of expensive, drably chauffeured automobiles; these ladies sat erect and far forward, smiling, showing themselves off behind the glittering glass, looking regal and utterly pleased with themselves. It was absurd, garish, a blatant open display of money and privilege; and it was so innocent it was charming, and I wanted to laugh out loud for joy in it.
Now, less than half a block away, we could hear, too: the thin, open-air screams of children, the jink-jink-jink of harness bells, the sharp haughty clip-clop of expensive hoofs on the Belgian-block paving of wood. And today, I saw now, there was someone controlling traffic at Broadway and Fifth: a giant policeman in tall helmet and white gloves, guiding traffic with sharply graceful motions of a slim baton like a man conducting an orchestra—making sure those carriages leaving the square were delayed very little by cruder traffic.
It was a marvelous scene, and off across the square through the branches of the winter trees I could see the white facades of strange hotel after hotel, and could read their signs: the Fifth Avenue, Albemarle, Hoffman House, St. James, Victoria, and to the north the Brunswick. It was like nothing in New York I'd ever seen, and I grinned at Julia, and said, "It's Paris!"
She was smiling, her face reflecting my own excitement, but she was shaking her head. "No, it isn't," she said proudly, "it's New York!"
We walked on to Madison Avenue, stopping at the curb to watch for a break in the circle of carriages, and I nodded toward Broadway just ahead. "How far down does the Ladies' Mile go?"
"To Eighth Street." Then, chanting it, " 'From Eighth Street down, the men are earning it. From Eighth Street up, the women are spurning it! That is the way of this great town, from Eighth Street up and Eighth Street down!' " and I could have kissed her. There was a break in the double line of circling carriages, and I grabbed Julia's hand, and we ran across Madison Avenue and into Madison Square. Through the etched branches of the trees I saw something far across the square and ahead to the north, or thought I did: a structure of some kind, but no, not really a structure, something else; an almost familiar shape. We'd entered a path curving ahead to the north and west, and my head was moving from side to side, eyes narrowed, trying to make out what I was glimpsing through the trees and constantly moving people on the path ahead.
I had Julia's hand still, after our run across the street, and I stopped so abruptly I yanked her arm, swinging her around to face me, surprised. I was standing motionless, staring across the square. I knew what I was seeing now, and it was impossible.
What I saw off across the paths beyond the people, the benches, snow, and still-lighted lamps couldn't be there but was; and I turned to Julia open-mouthed, my arm rising full length to point. "It's the arm," I said stupidly, then almost shouted it, a man turning to look at me. "My God," I said, "it's the Statue of Liberty's arm!" and I turned from Julia to stare at it again across the square.
I wouldn't have been surprised if it had vanished during the instant I'd looked away, but there it w
as still, solidly and impossibly there: The erect right arm of the Statue of Liberty was standing on the west side of Madison Square holding the lighted torch of liberty high above the surrounding trees.
I couldn't believe it. I walked so fast it was just short of running, Julia hurrying along beside me, her arm under mine, baffled at the intensity of my interest. Then we were there, stopped directly beside it, my head thrown back to sight up the length of that tremendous arm sprouting from a rectangular stone base. I'd never known it was this big; it was gigantic, an enormous forearm ending in a tremendous clenched right hand with fingernails big as a sheet of letter paper, and the great copper torch gripped in that hand was itself as tall as a three-story building. Far above, leaning over the ornate railing surrounding the base of the flame at the tip of the torch, people stared down at us. "The Statue of Liberty," I murmured to Julia, smiling incredulously. "The Statue of Liberty's arm!"
"Yes!" She was laughing at me, bewildered, amused. "It's been here for some time, brought from the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition." She glanced up at it idly. "The entire statue is to be erected in the harbor someday," she said without interest. "If they should ever decide where. And manage to collect enough money to do so. No one seems interested in paying for it; some say it will never go up."
"Well, I predict that it will!" I said exuberantly, recklessly. "And I'd say Bedloe's Island is just the place for it!" Then I stared again, delighted that the arm wasn't the aged and permanent acid-green I was used to, but new, the copper still coppery and only beginning to dull, the winter sun glinting dully from the knuckles and from the curved edge of the overhead railing, and at the tip and down one side of the torch.
We went up into the arm then, climbing the narrow little circular staircase inside, edging past people coming down, then stepping out onto the railed and circular walkway around the base of the torch. I looked out over Madison Square, that wonderful, joyous, wintertime square; looked out over the far-off helmet of the mustached, white-gloved, giant traffic cop toward a still-nonexisting Flatiron Building; looked down onto that narrow Fifth Avenue and strange, strange Broadway, and suddenly I had to close my eyes because actual tears were smarting at the very nearly uncontainable thrill of being here.
