Constance

by Patrick Mcgrath

  —You know we all thought she was by herself when she died? said Iris.

  I did. There were times when nobody was in the room with her and that was when it happened. Daddy went in a few minutes later and discovered the body. I remember Mildred Knapp telling us in the kitchen later that day as we sat staring into our teacups that she chose to go when she was alone. She said her husband, Walter, went that way. Then she clapped her hand to her mouth.

  I never forgot how Mildred’s hand flew to her mouth when she said the name of her late husband. Walter. Walter Knapp. She’d never mentioned him before. We hadn’t thought of Mildred having a husband, sour old Mildred. It made a strong impression on Iris too.

  —You get to choose? she whispered.

  —Sometimes, said Mildred. If you’re lucky.

  Harriet’s death was in the end a relief but it took Daddy a long time to get over it. I realized later he felt bad that he wasn’t with her at the end, to ease the pain of her departure. All this was in my mind as Iris told me she wasn’t alone.

  —What are you saying?

  —I was with her.

  I was shocked. She told me she’d gone into the bedroom and Harriet was gasping as though she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs. Iris thought she should go get Daddy but Harriet wanted her to stay with her. So Iris got in bed with her and held her hand. Then she died.

  —How did you know?

  —Her fingers went limp and it got real quiet.

  —What did you do?

  —After a bit I went away.

  —Why didn’t you tell anyone?

  —I thought I’d get in trouble.

  We stared at each other for a second. Then we burst out laughing. How we howled, oh, gales of mirth. We couldn’t help it. Iris had never told anybody until she told me, that’s how close we were. But at the same time I felt resentful. It was I who should have been with her at the end.

  So after Iris had her great success at the dinner Sidney gave in her honor I asked her please to show me the hotel where she worked. I was trying to look out for her. This was what Harriet had wanted me to do, for all I knew it was a mother’s dying wish. It was dusk and we were standing on the sidewalk in front of a brownstone on the corner of West Thirty-third not far from Penn Station. In the sky over Jersey I glimpsed a few smears of rusty sunset. There were black clouds overhead. I felt uneasy. The last of the light burnished the windows of the tenements opposite and made the fire escapes gleam. There was an empty lot just down the block with a chain-link fence around it. Some young men stood around, aimless and smoking. They kept looking at us. I didn’t like it. Iris told me it wasn’t so bad inside.

  —You don’t say.

  Wide stone steps with brass handrails ascended to a door overhung by a canopy embossed with the hotel’s crest. Pigeons roosted on the ledge above. As we mounted the steps they fluttered off into the gloom. We were greeted by a black man in a frayed gray uniform with scarlet piping. He welcomed us to the Dunmore Hotel. He greeted Iris by name.

  —Hi, Simon, she said, this is my big sis.

  She then took from her purse a pair of spectacles with heavy black frames and put them on. They transformed her completely. She looked like an intellectual!

  —Don’t look at me like that, she said, I need them.

  We entered a lobby with a tiled floor and pots of dusty ferns. Old leather armchairs and couches were grouped around low tables. The place was shabby, but a vestige of gentility still clung to it, and I imagined lonely salesmen checking in with their suitcases full of samples, then slipping out to buy a mickey of rye or whatever. By the reception desk a broad carpeted staircase ascended to the floors above. I discovered then, for I heard him, that the Dunmore boasted a pianist. Apparently he performed nightly in the cocktail lounge. His name was Eddie Castrol and Iris was eager that I meet him. I wanted to know why.

  —Are you going to get mad at me?

  —It depends what you’re going to say.

  Already my heart was sinking. Then she was telling me that she’d gotten involved with this man. That was why she wanted me to meet him. I told her I was going straight home unless she told me who he was. I was very firm about it. So we sat in the lobby for half an hour and she told me that this time it was the real thing.

  —Oh, is it? I said.

  She led me through to the lounge. It was a large gloomy room with scattered tables, a small dance floor, and a bar. The few customers sat alone or in huddled whispering couples. Lamps in scalloped shades gave out a muted yellowy glow. The atmosphere was strange and sad and vaguely dreamlike, and made more so by the presence of a man in a shabby tuxedo sitting at a concert grand on the far side of the room. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. He was playing something I couldn’t identify. It was oddly disconnected, spiky somehow. Syncopated. I am acutely sensitive to music. I am acutely sensitive to all sound.

  —Doesn’t he remind you of Daddy? whispered Iris.

  He did not! It was alarming that Iris should think he did. She showed me to a booth, then signaled the waitress and stood a moment gazing at Eddie Castrol through her ridiculous spectacles. He was grinning at us now. Iris walked off. I ordered a martini. Again I looked over at this man who reminded my sister of Daddy. His skin was like parchment, bleached white in the spotlight’s glare, but he could play piano all right.

  He was aware of my eyes on him. He leaned forward, head down, cigarette between his lips, poking at the keys like a bird digging worms, and shifted into of all things Moon River. Nobody else was listening. He played it very slow and moody. Too sentimental for me.

  I drifted into a reverie. I saw my sister in the arms of this lizardy man. I imagined him feasting on her plump soft heavy body like some kind of animal. It was a disquieting thought. He ended the set before she came back and with some abruptness stood up from the piano and crossed the room to thin applause. He had my full attention now. I lit a cigarette, it was that kind of a night. He slid smoothly into the booth beside me and introduced himself. He then turned toward the bar.

  —Where’s that girl gone now?

  It was the waitress he wanted. He grinned at me over his cigarette. He then made short work of a large gin and called for another. Lush, I thought. He swallowed gin like it was water. He leaned in and confided that he wouldn’t be here if the money wasn’t so good.

  I turned away.

  —Don’t embarrass me, I said.

  I was cold to him. I had nothing but disdain for this seedy man and this crummy joint my sister worked in. If it hadn’t been for her I’d have walked out. He lifted his hands as though to say: So what are we to talk about? And I thought: Yes, what are we to talk about?

  —Iris told me you write music.

  I was making conversation, nothing more. He pursed his lips as though he were about to kiss something and gazed at his gin with lifted eyebrows. Was it such a complicated question?

  —Yeah, I write stuff, he said at last.

  —Stuff? I said. I reached for another cigarette. I was not at ease. I suspected that the jagged thing he’d been playing when I came in was his stuff. I edit stuff, I said, stuff that others write. You think your stuff’s like my stuff or is my stuff different stuff?

  He lit my cigarette then dropped his eyes but there it was, I saw it again, that bent grin of his. I’d amused him. I hadn’t meant to, but I was gratified all the same.

  —You want to talk about it? I said.

  He was from Miami. His father introduced him to chamber music when he was seven years old. He’d gotten into the Juilliard School but he didn’t last long. I asked him why and he said he could go faster on his own. I laughed a little. I didn’t believe a word of it.

  —So tell me something, I said.

  —Sure.

  —What are you doing in this dump?

  I caught him by surprise. I got a bark of laughter out of him. He laid his hands flat on the table. He had the thinnest, most spidery fingers I’d ever seen, yellow at the tips. Perhaps
that’s why he reminded Iris of Daddy.

  —Dump is right. I’m only here for your sister.

  He knew it wasn’t true and so did I. He needed the money, pitiful though it surely was. But I played along.

  —You’d do that for Iris? She’s only here for you.

  —She thinks we have a future.

  He gazed straight at me as he lit another cigarette.

  —Don’t you?

  —Oh, come on, baby. You know my situation.

  —I know you’re married. Baby.

  He wasn’t abashed at all. Clearly he’d decided there was no point being anything other than straight with me. He drank off his gin and leaned in toward me and there was something of the shark in his expression now.

  —And you? he said.

  He had both elbows on the table. He was grinning. My glass was empty. He was a lanky loose-jointed man and his hair was oily. There were webs of tiny lines spreading across his cheekbones from the corners of his narrow black eyes. I looked around for the waitress, also for Iris returning. I’d forgotten about her. I felt a little sick. I told him that yes, I was married.

  —Going good? he said.

  —Mind your own business.

  He barked again then stood up from the table and a tension eased that I’d barely been aware of. Later we went to another bar. That night I was their audience. Some pair they made, him in his old tuxedo and her in that secondhand cocktail dress with her breasts spilling out and a cheap fur slung round her shoulders. Arm in arm we strutted the streets of Greenwich Village, three swells on a bender. Harriet would have been proud.

  When I talked to Iris the next day she didn’t mention the last part of the evening. The place we’d gone to was hot and smoky. There was jazz. Sometime after midnight Iris and I were settled on bar stools, Eddie Castrol between us with his jacket off, his shirt unbuttoned, and his back to the counter, the perpetual cigarette hanging from his lips. He was damp in places with perspiration. He seemed to know everyone. They all came by to say hi and slap his hand. I asked Iris how she saw their future. I should have known better.

  —Eddie? she said.

  —Lover.

  —My sister wants to know what your intentions are. You want to call the whole thing off?

  She spread a hand across her chest and sang the line in a deep wavering tuneless bass register: But ooooh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part—

  Eddie pulled her to him, spilling gin on her dress, but she didn’t care. She was happy as a child to be handled by this long-fingered piano player from Miami: He reminded her of Daddy. She laid her head on his shoulder, one arm hanging free as he stroked her hair then kissed it. She lifted her face and he kissed her on the lips. He was watching me while he did it. My prediction: She’d wind up with a broken heart. She was a good kid to hang around with but she was still a kid. He was too old for her. Too old, too jaundiced. Too married.

  I went back to the Dunmore a few nights later. I didn’t tell Iris I was doing this, I knew how it would look, the adults conferring about her welfare behind her back. She’d be furious. And this was the second time. When I walked in he saw me at once. He played a few bars of Moon River then joined me in the booth. He said to what did he owe the honor this time, and I said I wanted to thank him. He knew what I meant.

  —How is she?

  —She’s suffering now, I said. She’ll get over it. What did you tell her?

  He’d told her what I’d suggested he tell her. That was a few days earlier. I’d gone to the hotel and made it clear to him that he had to leave Iris alone. I said she was very young and he’d only do her harm. He didn’t protest. Then we’d talked about his family. We’d parted on good terms.

  Now he was frowning at the table and tapping the rim of his glass. He gazed at me and shook his head.

  —What is it? I said.

  Then he had an elbow on the table, his fingers splayed across his forehead. The lounge was busy that night. Women stopped by the table to say hello. He was charming to every one of them.

  —Ah, lord, he said.

  —Don’t tell me you love her, I said.

  —Do I love her? he said.

  He lifted his suffering eyes to mine. What a performer he was. Then all at once his mood lifted. The clouds parted, he leaned in. He touched my hand. Now he was tender.

  —It’d be different, he said, but there’s the kid to think of.

  —Kids survive divorce.

  —Not my Francie.

  I had to excuse myself and go to the ladies’ room, where I sat in a stall until I felt quiet again. Kids survive divorce. Did Sidney’s kid survive his divorce?

  It was at around this time he came home from visiting his ex-wife in New Jersey and told me he had a serious favor to ask me. I was working at the kitchen table that day. I was engaged in the edit of a badly written manuscript from which I was deriving no joy but Ellen Taussig had asked me to do it, it was a special job. He wanted to know if I’d mind if Howard stayed with us for a few days. The mother was going into the hospital. I asked him what was expected of me.

  —Just be civil.

  Gladys would cook his meals and as he was a quiet child he wouldn’t trouble me in the evenings. We’d barely be aware he was in the apartment. Sidney didn’t know where else he could go.

  So the next day I came home to find a thin, solemn boy sitting in Sidney’s kitchen with a plate of hot dogs in front of him. A curtain of hair the color of pale straw fell over his forehead, his arms and legs were like jointed sticks, and he had the fingers of a violinist. I guess my head was full of musicians then. He bore little resemblance to Sidney, who was a large heavy man of florid complexion and diminutive hands and feet.

  He stood up when I walked into the kitchen, and I thought, Why, he’s a little gentleman.

  —Hello, Howard Klein, I said.

  —Hello, Mrs. Klein.

  —Sit down, I said. Don’t you want mustard on those?

  —No, thank you.

  —Ketchup?

  —No, thank you.

  He sat down and I realized he wouldn’t be a problem. I remember thinking I was just like Howard at that age, scrupulously polite so as to guard my inner life from the adults. So the next day I suggested to Sidney that we get out of the city. He was busy with his book. He hated to be interrupted. I told him it wasn’t for myself that I asked, I thought Howard would like it.

  —You’re right, he said. We could go visit your father.

  —That’s not what I had in mind.

  I’d had enough of Daddy. We’d spent Labor Day with him. Instead we drove out to Long Island and spent the weekend in Montauk. It was good to get away. It was too cold to swim in the ocean but we took long windy walks on the beach. There were dunes, and driftwood, and heaps of large flat stones, and big shiny clumps of seaweed swept in on the autumn tides. I watched Howard and his father kneeling on the damp sand to inspect a dead sea turtle. Sidney turned it over with a stick and Howard shrieked with joy when dozens of tiny black crabs came swarming out. We had dinner in a seafood shack. The wind had put color in Howard’s face, dabs of red high on his cheeks, and it had done the same to me. Sidney was pleased. He wanted us to be friends, Howard and I. He thought it would be good for me. It would get my mind off my father, he said, if I had to behave like a mother.

  One night around this time I had to get myself all fixed up for a faculty party of Sidney’s that I didn’t want to attend. I was in the bedroom. I wanted to wear my gray silk thing. Sidney came in looking for his watch. He was concerned about the time. I didn’t feel like being nice to him. He hadn’t been sympathetic when I told him that Iris had had her heart broken and was very depressed. He said it was simple. She should stop drinking and go into analysis.

  —You’re making me nervous, I said. Can’t you go read the paper or something?

  I watched him in the mirror. He sat on the bed and stared at his hands and frowned. I was pressing tissues to my face so it would stay matte in the hea
t.

  I selected a lipstick. Poor Iris. That morning I’d visited her. I hated how she lived now. Her apartment was on the third floor of a tenement just south of the Manhattan Bridge. When I stepped into the lobby the smell of boiled vegetables almost made me sick. I climbed the three flights and found her door already open. She shouted at me to come in. The place was a shambles. She tried to keep it in some sort of order but she wasn’t a tidy girl and she’d been up all night. I heard the shower come on. I stood at the window and looked down at the street below. There were Chinese people scurrying along the sidewalk and bums sitting under the statue of Confucius. They were passing bottles in brown paper bags. The traffic was loud so I closed the window. Almost at once the tiny apartment became close and sticky. It was a dank, dull day in the fall and the sky was threatening rain.

  She appeared in her bathrobe toweling her hair. She apologized for the state of the apartment. She’d been planning a big houseclean yesterday but she’d been called out to do a little hostessing, whatever that meant. She got a couple of cold beers out of the icebox and yawned while she looked for clean glasses. I no longer tried telling her she was made for better things. Then we were sitting at a low table heaped with lurid novels and cheap magazines and medical journals, also a half-empty bottle of brandy, cheap Spanish stuff. After the breakup with Eddie they’d had a few last trysts in the hotel but now that was all over too and she was again foundering.

  —What the hell am I going to do? she said.

  I was very clear about this. I took her hands in mine and spoke firmly to her.

  —You’re going to study medicine and work very hard and forget all about Eddie and become a doctor. That’s what you’re going to do.

  She turned away. I’d aroused not even a flicker of resolve in her.

  —I’ve got a bad feeling about it, she said.

  —What do you mean?