He cooks! I thought.
On our first date, we walked nearly half the length of Manhattan holding hands. The good-night kiss outside my apartment building was so passionate the doormen on duty teased me for weeks. I walked into the lobby alone, blushing violently.
The first time he came over to my apartment, he brought me fourteen Ziploc bags of herbs that he had carefully cut, separated, and cleaned. They were from the garden of his home, a ranch-style bungalow he had recently bought on a canal on the east end of Long Island. He proudly showed me photographs of the renovations he had just completed. I made him Edward’s shrimp and corn chowder. The herbs reminded me instantly of Edward. And, like Edward, I stored most of them in the freezer.
But it was Hurricane Sandy that really brought us together. For a few days after the storm hit, I felt that I had returned to covering a war. New York was battered by Sandy and for days Manhattan south of Thirtieth Street remained a disaster zone, with no subway service or electricity. Ninety percent of Long Island was in the dark.
In the early hours of the storm, my little corner of Manhattan experienced a heightened state of emergency. And while there were no sandbags outside the Russian Tea Room for this hurricane, the aftermath might have been described as equally strange. On the night Sandy struck, I rushed to cover the story of a crane that dangled precipitously from the seventieth floor of an unfinished residential skyscraper on West Fifty-Seventh Street, right near my apartment. I had seen the crane snap in high winds outside a window in my building and held my breath imagining that it would crash onto the street. Up close, the swaying crane seemed attached by a string to the towering half-finished development, where a penthouse apartment had just sold to a Russian billionaire for $115 million.
Flashing my press credentials, I tried to sneak through the yellow tape that the New York City Fire Department had used to cordon off the street. But I didn’t make it beyond the back entrance of the New York Athletic Club two blocks away. Two cops told me to stay put, and I found myself packed into a crowd of exasperated New Yorkers who sat with their beautifully groomed dogs and overnight bags. They had been evacuated from their tony apartment buildings situated directly underneath the crane. Many of the upscale refugees had already gone to the second-floor bar for a drink. The ones who were hanging out in the lobby were not allowed to go upstairs because of the club’s strict rules governing pets. The elderly man, dressed in tweeds and a raincoat, who wearily slid into the seat beside me, said he was homeless now that he had been forced out of his building. It was but a momentary state of affairs, though. A few minutes later his wife got off the phone with the Harvard Club, where they were members. She secured them a room at $400 a night.
Edward laughed when I told him this story over chocolate cake. I could not yet find a way to tell him what happened a few days later: I waited on East Fortieth and Third Avenue for the Hampton Jitney—the bus that makes regular stops in the villages and hamlets that dot the north and south forks of Long Island. I was headed toward the coast, the storm-ravaged danger zone, to the outer reaches of Long Island, where hundreds of homes had been destroyed, where tens of thousands were without electricity, and where there were long lineups at all the gas stations the jitney passed on the Long Island Expressway. I had packed essentials—rubber boots, food, wine. On the bus, I cursed when I realized that I had forgotten a flashlight, a Swiss Army knife.
All I knew was that the attorney refused to evacuate his home during the worst of the storm. Later, he showed me where he had sat out the tempest alone, facing the living room window in his rocking chair, surveying the rushing floodwaters as they came to within three feet of the house he had moved into just a few months before. To this day, that’s the image that always comes to mind when I think of him—a modern-day cowboy defending the homestead.
The night I arrived, we rode bicycles along darkened streets, where the ravages of the storm were everywhere—roadways blocked by felled tree branches, downed power lines, and the occasional frightened deer. The ostentatious summer homes near the shore were shuttered and eerily empty, and the sky was streaked an inky gray and black.
When I moved to New York, I had dreamed of the landscape on the eastern end of Long Island that I’d seen only in photographs, imagined visiting the strips of land that jutted out into the Atlantic Ocean. Sagaponack, Shinnecock, Quogue, Montauk—the names were elemental, pure, ancient, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “fresh, green breast of the new world.” At the end of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald describes the view that greeted seventeenth-century Dutch sailors when they came upon the coast of Long Island. “For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
The wind was calm as we walked hand in hand along the deserted beach. I felt Fitzgerald’s “transitory enchanted moment” and I held my breath in the presence of this landscape and this extraordinary man.
“There is somewhere someone who will feel lucky knowing you. And if lucky enough, loving you.” The words from one of Edward’s early letters—a message so crucial that he had walked to my apartment building on Roosevelt Island over dangerously slippery, ice-packed sidewalks to deliver it to my doorman. Now his lines came back to me in a flood of emotion. But I recognized that I was the lucky one.
That night, after the storm, on that dark beach, he held my hand and whispered, “Thank you for rescuing me.” And I couldn’t stop smiling. For, really, it was me who had been saved.
17
Grilled Steak
Mashed Potato Croquettes
Sugar Snap Peas Sautéed in Butter
Various Pastries
Lemon-Infused Gin Martini
Merlot
I could tell Edward was grilling steak even before I entered his apartment. The front door was slightly ajar, and when I walked in a cold blast of air blew my hair back. He had left most of the windows open to circulate air in the apartment.
I had returned to Roosevelt Island on assignment and had spent the day staking out a government bureaucrat outside her Main Street office, just a block or so from Edward’s apartment building. We had received a tip that the bureaucrat was using a state car at government expense to drive from her home in Westchester to Roosevelt Island, and that state employees were spending their work time walking the bureaucrat’s dog. It wasn’t exactly Watergate, but it was the kind of waste of government money that the Post loves to expose. By now I was a pro at these.
Since I left the island a couple of years ago, I had rarely returned in daylight and so hadn’t observed all the changes that had taken place. The southern part of the island was cordoned off as construction crews tore down some of the old hospital complexes to make way for Cornell University’s new campus. Edward’s building had become a pricey co-op. After the building’s board voted to privatize the complex, apartments started to sell for market value. Edward was shocked when he learned that his one-bedroom could now fetch nearly one million dollars. Not that he was planning to sell. I knew he was determined to stay in his apartment until he died.
New shops had started opening on Main Street, including a liquor store, a nail salon, and an organic grocery store. I installed myself at the nail salon and paid an exorbitant price for a manicure/pedicure so that I could sit at their window, which afforded a clear view of the government office I was staking out.
As my nails dried, I sipped the remains of a cold coffee and watched life unfold on the street: Children waiting for school buses crowded the sidewalks and residents headed toward the East River promenade clad in upscale jogging clothes. In fact, life seemed so pleasant that the photographer who later joined me on assignment was thoroughly impressed: “Wow, I never imagined it could be so nice here.”
I said nothing. The island was still a difficult place for me because of the memories
of my separation and the sensation of being incarcerated at my old apartment complex, The Octagon. Whenever I came back it was mostly under the cover of night, when I was invited to Edward’s.
Today he was expecting me for an unusually early dinner and had already started cooking by the time I knocked on the open door. I shivered as I took off my coat. When Edward grills steak or lamb, he uses a cast- iron skillet that he says needs to be scorching hot. And because New York City apartments tend to have only rudimentary ventilation, the resultant smoke sends his fire alarm into beeping panic mode. A brisk wind blew into the apartment from the open windows, and I longed for him to start the steaks so that they would finish and we could shut out the cold.
But Edward was in no hurry. He had marinated flank steaks in balsamic vinegar and taken the meat out of the refrigerator “to allow it to rest” before he began grilling. Now Edward was making us martinis in the kitchen. He had placed two martini glasses in the freezer and was in the process of zesting a lemon. He added the lemon zest to the cup of gin that he had also chilled and, after about ten minutes, filtered the lemony gin before he added dry vermouth. He returned the mixture to the freezer for a few minutes, and finally he poured the cocktails into the chilled glasses with a flourish. We toasted to Paula’s memory before Edward tasted his creation.
“This is the best martini I’ve ever had in my whole life,” said Edward, with a sense of triumph that I had never seen before.
“Really?”
But Edward had turned his back and was occupied with the steaks and with sautéing sugar snap peas. He put his potato croquettes in the oven and set everything out on his pre-warmed white dinner plates.
I took another sip of my martini and then I apologized to Edward for not calling him on the anniversary of Paula’s death. I had promised him I would call and then promptly forgot, even as I stopped by his apartment to borrow a book that I wanted to read. But the truth was even worse. I had actually forgotten the anniversary itself.
Of course, Edward never forgot the significance of October 19th. He never forgot the magical serenade Paula performed before she died, and the promise he had made to her to keep on living after she was gone. “My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine, you make me smile with my heart. . . . you’re my favorite work of art.”
“She grew weak and needed to sleep, saying she would sing more but first, ‘just a little nap,’ and closed her eyes for the last time,” wrote Edward, in a cream-colored leporello—the tribute card he made in honor of Paula. He gave me a copy of the leporello, sheathed in a protective wax paper envelope, the first time we met. I don’t know why I didn’t open it until more than a year later. When I moved to Central Park South, I found “About Paula,” still in its waxy envelope, untouched among some of the letters Edward had written to me.
I took out the elegant card, which unfolded like an accordion over several pages. There are two portraits of Paula: one with the familiar outstretched chin and dangly gold earrings, a confident smile; the other is much softer, showing a more contemplative Paula. The rest is a collection of Edward’s poetry and prose detailing Paula’s illness and her last day on earth. The last passage is an imagined dialogue between Paula and Death. Paula tells Death that she can’t die until she knows that Edward will continue living.
“I sat weeping, knowing all she had been thinking about was the need to make me change my mind. I thought about her refusal to die until she had done all she could to accomplish that,” wrote Edward. Of course, he did change his mind and he kept that promise to Paula.
Edward repeatedly told me he was an atheist (and I suspect Paula was, too) but every year on the anniversary of Paula’s death, he insisted on observing Paula’s Jewish heritage. He willed himself to stay up late, and at the stroke of midnight —when October 18th becomes the 19th—Edward lights a yahrzeit candle that burns for a full twenty-four hours.
“I wish he wouldn’t leave that candle burning like that,” said Laura when I showed up to borrow the book from Edward on the day of the anniversary.
I looked at the candle and then glanced at Laura in confusion.
“My mother’s death,” she said simply. I could hear the fear and frustration in her voice that her elderly father had gone to take a nap and left the candle burning on his cluttered desk. She must have arrived right before me.
The apartment was in a bit of disarray. There were paintings that Edward had removed from the living room walls, ghostly rectangles of the faded paint marking where they used to hang. There were pots spread out on old newspapers on the kitchen counter. Edward must have been in the midst of polishing them. Some of the pots still had the powdery streaks of the copper solution he used in his periodic cleaning of his kitchen tools. He always polished the pots until their copper bottoms gleamed.
I went to the living room shelves and found the book I needed to borrow—The Force of Things: A Marriage in War and Peace—a memoir of an extraordinary marriage. I had given the book to Edward for his birthday, and he raved about it so much that I asked to borrow it. The book, by New Yorker writer Alexander Stille, details the tempestuous forty-year marriage of his parents, two New Yorkers—a Russian-Jewish journalist who lived in exile in Italy before moving to New York, where he meets his American wife at a party for Truman Capote in 1948. When I read the description of the book and dipped into some of its pages. I couldn’t help but think of Edward and Paula, and their very special relationship.
Stille is clear-eyed about his parents’ shortcomings and describes some of the epic battles they waged during his childhood, but he also celebrates his parents’ intense and enduring bond, told against the backdrop of war and exile. As Stille writes, “Our lives have meaning—above and beyond our individual qualities—because we are part of and express the times in which we live.” This resonated with Edward, who read the book in just a few days. He called to tell me how much he loved it, and that he was planning to buy copies to give to his friends.
I told Laura that I probably should write Edward a note telling him that I had borrowed the book. But mostly I wanted to let him know that I had made a point of dropping by on the anniversary of Paula’s death, even though my visit was purely accidental and I would have otherwise completely forgotten the date. But Laura promised that she’d tell Edward I was there and I left without leaving him a note.
The year before, near the anniversary of Paula’s death, Edward had called me at work to relate a remarkable event. He had awoken shortly after midnight the night before to go to the bathroom, noticed that a light was on in the living room, and was momentarily confused. Was it Valerie, who sometimes stayed up to read when she visited? But Valerie wasn’t visiting. Was it Laura? But why would Laura come to him in the middle of the night? Had he left a light on by accident?
No, he said, it was Paula. He had received what he called “a visitation” from Paula, and he wanted to let me know. “I thought you would be happy,” he said over the phone.
He was right, of course. And I was happy that he had called to tell me. “You’ve made my day!” I said. “Thank you, Edward.”
I was deeply distressed when I realized that I had missed such an important date. After all, Edward remembered all the significant days in my life—my birthday, my daughter’s birthday. He even remembered the day in 2010 that he says I was “reborn.” It was easy to remember, coming as it did on Valentine’s Day, although it was the antithesis of romantic: It was February 14th when I entered a legal office in midtown Manhattan to sign the sheaf of documents that became my formal petition for divorce.
There may have been a subconscious poetic justice of signing a divorce petition on Valentine’s Day but I regret the timing of it now. I’m not sure what’s worse, my callous disregard for the day’s significance or the complete absence of a romantic soul. I suspect the latter was a far more egregious offense to someone such as Edward. And maybe that’s why the date stuck in his mind.
At one point Edward was so ever-present i
n my thoughts that I easily remembered everything—his birthday, his wedding anniversary, his daughters’ birthdays, and even his grandson’s birthday. I had first met Andrew as a three-year-old who accompanied his mother, Valerie, to work. They would stop off for bagels across the street from her office in Toronto, and a nanny would take him home or to preschool. Even though Andrew was approaching his thirties, I still kept up with the important milestones in his life through Edward and Valerie.
But now, truth was, I was wrapped up in the euphoria of my blossoming relationship. The pockets of my coats rattled with the green beach glass from our walks on the windswept Hamptons beach. I had little time for my friends; I spoke less to Edward, and that was usually by phone. Every Friday, as soon as I finished with my deadlines, I took off for the Long Island village by the sea that was the scene of my newfound happiness.
My life had changed completely since I first dined with Edward. Now I boarded the Long Island Railroad every weekend, reading books and working at my computer on the lengthy rides through the gritty parts of Queens and through pine forests and the picturesque beach towns that rushed through my window on the Montauk line. Once there, we drove a convertible with the top down even in winter, my hands red and raw from gripping a cold steering wheel, but heady with an exciting sense of freedom.
In the summer I grew herbs, potatoes, onions, garlic, and a handful of vegetables in the garden. I made my own cheese, ice cream, and little jars of jelly from the tiny, bright red crab apples that freighted the branches of an old tree that overlooked the canal behind the bungalow I now shared on the weekends with the man I loved. We watched back-to-back episodes of Julia Child’s The French Chef, and on our first New Year’s Eve we made her delicate fish mousseline, blending haddock with cream and butter and parsley in the new red Kitchen Aid mixer we had bought the day before. We toasted with champagne and slurped down a tray of oysters before digging into the fluffy mousseline. After that first forkful, we looked up from our plates and smiled at each other—it was surely one of the best things we had ever tasted.
Dinner with Edward Page 12
