by Frank Conroy
Claude understood the implication. It made him uneasy to think about himself that way, and yet he felt some quiet stir of recognition deep down. There was even a distant flash of excitement as, for a split second, he sensed the vague possibility of transcending the circumstances of his life, of gaining a new kind of freedom. Was he strong enough? he wondered.
"Are you nervous?" Claude asked as the cab took them down Park Avenue.
Lady gave a little snort. "Not on your life." She'd dressed carefully, though. Brown suit, silk blouse, thin red scarf at her throat, silver snowflake pin on her lapel. She'd had her hair done the previous day, and although there were no major changes Claude wasn't quite used to it yet. "All this will be is a bore," she said.
When they pulled up in front of the house Claude paid twice the meter. "Merry Christmas," he said. He could see from the hack license that the driver's name was Horowitz.
"Thanks. Same to you."
The heavy iron door had been left ajar, and Lady surprised Claude by opening the inner one with a key. She led the way up the stairs, through the hall, and into the living room without hesitation. There were perhaps a dozen people standing around with punch glasses of eggnog, conversing in small groups. The first person to approach was Senator Barnes, smiling broadly. He gave Lady a kiss and shook Claude's hand.
"Splendid," the old man said. "Well done."
If Claude had been apprehensive about the possibility of an emotional scene of some sort, he had worried for nothing. Lady forged ahead, touched cheeks with her mother, nodded to her father, and said hello to a few people on her way to the punch bowl. There was no indication from anyone that anything the least bit out of the ordinary was going on. Once again Claude had the feeling that he had wandered into a smooth play in which all of the participants (except himself) were following to the letter the orders of some unseen director.
"Want some?" Lady asked.
"I don't know. Eggs."
"Have some wine, then," she said, motioning to the maid. "Got to have something. A glass of white wine for my husband, please, Maria." The maid nodded and left.
"Who are these people?" Claude asked.
"Some of their friends. A few moderately distant relatives. I have to mix, but why don't you sit down and let them come to you. Ha. Ha."
"Sure, but—" He was going to offer support.
"I know," she said, "but it'll be easier this way. Just the first go-round." She moved off to a small group by the French windows.
Claude thought he should at least present himself to Mrs. Powers. She was talking animatedly in a corner with an elderly gentleman, and as Claude approached he saw her eyes flit sideways and then back with incredible speed. She pretended to be surprised when he arrived.
"Hello," Claude said. "Merry Christmas." He did not offer to shake hands, since she held a punch glass.
"There you are, Claude," she said. "Judge Pearson. Claude Rawlings."
Nods. Smiles. The judge raised his glass just as Maria delivered white wine to Claude, who answered with a like gesture.
"We were just talking about that horrid man in Cuba," Mrs. Powers said. "It's such a shame."
"Yes, it is," Claude agreed. "I believe he's fooling the people. But then again, Batista was pretty horrid himself."
"Do you think so," said the judge with an edge of truculence.
"We used to have such nice times in Havana," said Mrs. Powers, "in the old days."
Claude held the judge's eye. "I was surprised to learn there were no public schools in Cuba."
"Catholic schools," said the judge.
"But no free schools," Claude insisted.
"Excuse me for a moment," Mrs. Powers said. "I must have a word with Maria." She broke away.
An exuberant, slightly flushed man in a bow tie touched the judge's elbow. "Freddie, I heard about the dwarf! I was next door defending Graff and Graff, but I couldn't get away."
Claude stood silently while the two men discussed a case the judge had recently heard involving a sexually deviant dwarf who had dressed as a child in order to infiltrate the children's sections of various movie theaters. Lowering their voices, watchful for the ladies, they traded off-color jokes.
"You'll have to tell Dewman," bow tie said. "He'll get a kick out of it."
"Dewman Fisk?" Claude asked.
Both men looked at him as if they'd forgotten he was there. "It was Dewman Fisk's law," the judge said. "He pushed it through when he was deputy mayor. Children's sections in the theaters." He turned back to the other man. Claude moved away and took a seat on a couch, holding his wine glass carefully. He could see Lady's back as she talked to her father, but could read nothing from either her posture or his expression.
After a while Senator Barnes joined him on the couch, sitting close. They watched the party for a few moments and then the senator spoke, not moving his head, looking out at the crowd with an amiable expression. "Whatever he says or does, ignore it. The handsome cowboy is a weak man, and like many weak men, he's a bully. You've got better things to do than play his game. And don't repeat this to my granddaughter, if you please." Then he got up and chased down Maria for an hors d'oeuvre.
Claude was both surprised and flattered that the old man would speak to him so directly. He felt recognized, trusted, and he was sorry he couldn't tell Lady about this new connection. He glanced at Ted Powers—talking to the judge now—and felt himself flush. There would never be any way to get through to the man, and the senator was telling him not even to bother to try. So be it, Claude thought, and despite everything he felt a twinge of regret.
When they left the house Lady turned toward Lexington Avenue, but Claude touched her arm and they went the other way, toward Third. It was a chilly gray day with small eddies of wind. The streets were quiet.
"Wasn't so bad," Claude said. "I felt like a piece of furniture most of the time, but that's okay. I'm glad we went."
"I suppose." Lady had a long stride, and they walked in the same rhythm. "Not a word, though. Not the slightest hint of any regret or responsibility from either one of them."
They turned the corner and started uptown. Third Avenue had a special smell—a combination of the elevated itself, with its wood, steel, and ozone, the flat odor of beer from the saloons (it seemed every fifth building had a bar), and the lingering scents of fruits and vegetables from the closed-up stands. More than any other street he knew, it smelled of life, as if the Irish, Germans, Italians, and Jews who lived in the upper floors of the low buildings, cooking for a hundred years, had impregnated the very cobblestones.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"I thought we could say hello to Mr. Weisfeld."
At Eighty-first Street they found an open candy store and bought a New York Times.
"Did you know Dewman Fisk started the children's section in all the movies?" Claude said as they crossed the corner. "Christ, I used to hate having to sit there. You know, they'd catch me and march me over. Screaming kids, hard-ass matrons, plus it was always down front and to the side and your neck would ache."
"I didn't go much when I was a kid," Lady said. "Once in a while with my mother or the governess. Fantasia, National Velvet, that sort of thing."
"Abbott and Costello?"
"Oh, no. They were vulgar, supposedly."
Claude laughed. "Well, slapstick is supposed to be vulgar. That's the point."
"They let me see Chaplin."
"Yes, but Chaplin wasn't funny. At least he never made me laugh." He slapped the rolled-up newspaper against his palm. "I don't know what they're so afraid of. Your grandfather told me he wasn't allowed to read Dickens when he was a boy. Thackeray was okay, but Dickens was vulgar. Can you beat that? And I've heard really good musicians say the same thing about jazz. People who ought to know better." He shook his head.
"Snobbism," Lady said.
"I guess."
At the music store Claude peered through the window and then opened the door with his key. The silver bell
tinkled in the empty room. He switched on the lights behind the cash register and gave the door to Weisfeld's rooms a couple of sharp raps.
"Maybe he's out," Lady said, peering into the harmonica case. "Look at this one! It's enormous. I didn't know they made them that big."
"He's never out. Almost never, anyway." He tried the door, which opened, and called up the stairs. "Aaron! It's me! Are you up there? Come down and say Merry Christmas. We brought you the paper."
Silence. Claude remained motionless, staring upward. For some reason he thought Weisfeld was there. He felt it.
"Why don't you go up? You say he takes naps, maybe he's taking a nap."
Claude closed the door. "No. I guess he's out." He did not want to explain that he'd never been upstairs, that it had simply been the unspoken rule for almost twenty years. He left the newspaper by the cash register.
They walked home, crossing Park Avenue at Ninetieth Street. They paused at the central island, where, because of a moderate elevation, they could see seven or eight blocks in either direction. The avenue was utterly still, free of traffic and pedestrians. It looked like a photograph from Life magazine.
"It's almost eerie," Lady said, her breath fogging the air.
At home, Lady went upstairs and Claude put Bartók on the record player and sat in an armchair with the score. It was Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. Claude thought it the most important piece of ensemble music from the period just before the war, and he'd been studying it for more than a month, continuously discovering new things. After a couple of hours he went upstairs. Lady was taking a bath, but she'd laid out his clothes for the late afternoon gathering at the Fisks'. They were neatly arranged on the bed, the suit still in the dry cleaner's bag, the shoes side by side on the floor. She had even selected a tie, the one from Sulka she'd given him this morning.
They had planned to walk over to Fifth and down, but the temperature was dropping fast, and when Claude spied a cab coming their way with its dome light on, he flagged it down. He held the door for Lady and then got in beside her.
"Eighty-eighth and Fifth," he said, and caught his breath as he recognized the back of Al's head. "Hey, Al!" He was instantly nervous. This had never happened before.
Al turned and flashed a smile. "Hi, Claude. Merry Christmas, Mrs. Rawlings. Now ain't this a coincidence."
"Nice to see you again Al," Lady said. "Working today?"
"Oh, sure. Big tips on Christmas. Emma's out in the other cab. No stopping that woman." He engaged the gears. "You want the Park side or the street side?"
"The street, but it doesn't matter."
Al lowered the flag on the meter. "Just for show, folks," he said. "Emma's real happy with that color TV. It came day before yesterday and it works fine. I know she'd want me to thank you."
"Ah, well," Claude managed. "Good, that's good." He felt awkward, and was aware of Lady patting his knee and giving him a reassuring nod.
"We'll have to come over and see it sometime," she said.
"Why sure, anytime at all," Al said.
"Yes." Claude was remembering. Several months after his marriage he'd told Weisfeld about that terrible morning when he'd confronted his mother. "So if she doesn't know," Weisfeld had said, "she doesn't know. Too bad, although in the end what difference does it make, you are who you are. The one thing you can't do is leave that poor woman sitting in the basement thinking you've made some kind of a big-deal moral judgment. You know, about her love life back then when she was just a girl. That would be too cruel, Claude. Be a mensch, go over there." So he had gone, bringing Lady with him, and smoothed things over as best he could. Lady had been superb—tactful and generous in equal measure, helping everyone through without seeming to do anything. Now, as they approached the Fisk mansion, Claude felt guilty at how little he'd seen of them since.
"I hear you sometimes on WQXR," Al said. "It always gives me a kick when they say your name." He pulled up at the corner. "This okay?"
"This is fine," Claude said. "Lady, go ahead, would you please? I'll just be a minute."
Lady nodded and went into the mansion. Claude got in the front seat with Al. "How is she?"
"Fine, fine," Al said. "Staying even. Working hard."
"Good."
"There was a time there about a year ago..." Al readjusted his weight in the seat. "She read in the paper that Leo Szilard got cancer. He's a hero to her, you know, a big scientist but a rebel, all kinds of far-out ideas. So she calls the hospital to find out how he's doing, and somehow or other she's talking to the man himself. He picked up the phone by his bed and they get to talking."
"You're kidding."
"She'd call him every couple of days, and she was so excited about the whole thing I had to get watchful, you know, watching for the signs."
"What did they talk about?" Claude knew that Szilard had been one of the inventors of the atomic bomb.
"I didn't hear all that much. Like it was her thing. I don't know—he should try a vegetarian diet, how dolphins were just as smart as people, some book called No More War, different kinds of stuff. She got all whipped up about those calls, talking about them all the time like they were old friends, her and Leo." He smiled and shook his head. "I was worried for a while, but it turned out okay. She didn't go..." With his index finger he made an upward spiral in the air. "It was long distance too. To tell you the truth, I was relieved when the man died."
"Yes," Claude said.
"She was sad for about a week, and then she just forgot all about it. So it was okay."
They sat in silence for a while.
"I've been going uptown now and then," Claude said. "To the jazz clubs."
"All right." Al's eyes moved as he caught a woman hailing him from the next block. "Let's go together sometime." He prepared to pull from the curb. "Good to see you, Claude."
Claude got out and watched the cab move away. For some reason he had wanted to tell Al about the doctor's report, about the fact that he couldn't have children, but the moment was past. Now the cab turned east and was gone.
Lady had waited for him in the foyer. "We're in, we eat, and we're out," she said.
"That's fine with me," he said, accepting her direction.
The first thing he noticed was the lack of flowers. There was only a small Christmas tree in the corner of the living room. People were gathered in tight clusters around the room—the same crowd from the morning plus an equal number of others. A few children of various ages wandered about, on their best behavior, their voices low. Claude looked for Peter, but couldn't find him.
"There you are, Lady." Dewman Fisk lowered his long, bassethound face to kiss her cheek. "And this must be young Claude. I've heard so much about you."
As he shook hands Claude realized the man did not remember him. "We met years ago, sir. No reason for you to remember it, though."
"Did we?" Fisk said easily. "Well, you must forgive me. So many artists over the years, I'm afraid as I get older..." His voice trailed off as his eyes picked up another entering guest. "Ah, there's poor old Henry. Excuse me." He moved away.
"I don't know why that man has always given me the creeps," Lady said.
"In what way?"
"Something oily. Something wet about him."
"Wet?"
"It's hard to explain." She surveyed the room. "My aunt must be in the library."
But she was not. Two boys of about ten sat on the floor under a tall window playing Parcheesi. Lady gave them a wave as she sat down on the couch in front of the fire. "I haven't the faintest idea who they are. Somebody's second cousins, I suppose."
Claude stood at the mantel.
Occasionally someone would enter the room, nod to them or say hello, and then go back to the living room. A maid brought them glasses of champagne and a tray of cheese biscuits.
"Who's winning?" Lady called over to the boys.
"I am," they said simultaneously, and fell into a fit of giggles.
A strikingly handsome woma
n with black hair and an olive complexion entered and came over to the fireplace. She wore a simple but elegantly cut black suit and no jewelry save for a bracelet of silver and jade.
"Excuse me," she said with the faintest trace of an accent. "I must see to the fire."
As she reached for the screen Claude bent over to pick a small log from the stack in the brass holder. "Here, let me," he said. When she'd opened the screen halfway he slipped the log onto the fire. Their eyes met as she closed the screen.
"Hola," she said calmly. "It is you."
"Isidra?"
She nodded. "Now they call me Miss Sanchez. I am the housekeeper."
"Well, good. And the others? The driver—what was his name?"
"Oh, no. The others are all gone a long time ago. We have new people."
Claude glanced at Lady, who was watching the exchange with interest. "This is Isidra, I mean Miss Sanchez." The women nodded to each other.
"You are married?" Miss Sanchez surprised them with her boldness.
"Miss Sanchez gave me a little wooden cross a long time ago. I still have it, by the way," Claude said, turning back to her.
"That's good," she said with a slight smile. "Very good."
"No, I really do."
"It did the job, you could say."
"What...," he began, then shifted. "I never understood why you gave it to me."
She nodded again to Lady and moved away a few steps. "I was very young. I saw the movies where you hold out the cross and the evil one shrinks and goes away. I was a silly girl, really." She turned and left the room.
After a moment Lady said, "What in heaven's name was that all about?"
Claude stared at the empty doorway. "I don't know."
"The evil one?"
He shook his head. "I haven't the faintest idea."
"Did she mean you?"
"No, I think she liked me. I know she did."
"How weird. That was a Chanel suit she was wearing, by the way. Muy expensive."
