Now two men came out onto the porch and down the steps, carrying a sofa.
He turned the page and began drawing freely, a castle part Brokaw Mansion, part Neuschwanstein, perched on an Alpine cliff. In the distance he drew the slightest suggestion of a Japanese temple (Marge had given him their father’s painting of the Reading Pagoda after all; he put it over the credenza in his office—“Freddy’s Pagoda”). For years he’d fantasized having a country house close to the city. He might find the right plot of land somewhere upstate or in Connecticut, but now there seemed no point in designing it himself. He’d run out of ideas. The truth was, he had little to say as an architect, never really having developed a style of his own. He’d adapted himself well—too well, some might say—to the corporate style of Emerson, Root. Maybe he’d never really wanted to invent new buildings. Maybe all he ever wanted was to inhabit the old, pay homage to the tastes, proportions, and manners of an earlier era. Instead of designing a country house from scratch, or combining parts of the old with something new, maybe he should look to buy an old house and renovate it, restore it to its former glory.
(“Now it’s my turn! You said it was my turn!”)
He turned the page and saw the face of Curt. It was a portrait he’d drawn their first day in Florence. Curt stood at the open window of the hotel room, a sliver of the Arno River behind him, with heaps of buildings, two towers and a dome, a suggestion of hills and trees, beyond. His hands gripped the windowsill. He looked stiff and uncomfortable in his shirtsleeves. Frederick had begged him to wear something more formal than a t-shirt. For once, he said, do this for me, I want to see you dressed up. And Curt had obliged.
Had he been too harsh with the boy? When they reunited a week after the separation in Venice, Frederick hardly spoke to him. Could barely look him in the eye. By a kind of perverse, negative energy, he maintained his aloofness the entire flight back to New York, and then the long taxi ride from the airport to the city, and all the rest of that first night at home. The next morning Curt tried to bring up the subject of what had happened in Venice. I will not discuss it, Frederick said, what’s done is done.
“But we have to discuss it. Why can’t we discuss it?”
“Because it’s in the past,” Frederick said. “Do you understand? It’s finished. I’m finished!” There was a finality to his outburst that surprised even himself.
Curt collapsed. “Then I guess you’ll be wanting me to leave.”
Frederick had no trouble saying it: “Yes, that would be best. As soon as possible.”
But his compassion for the boy rose up. He hated to think of him standing on the sidewalk, his few possessions at his feet, nowhere to go. He watched while Curt telephoned Collin to confirm it was all right for him to move back. He offered to drive.
“Don’t bother, I’ve taken care of it.”
“But I want to.”
“Never mind, please, Collin is coming to get me!”
When the buzzer rang later that afternoon announcing Collin’s arrival, and Frederick said “Send him up,” Curt fell to his knees and cried. “Paolo didn’t mean anything to me! He never meant a thing! You have to believe me!”
Frederick was flabbergasted to see him groveling on the floor. He felt at that moment tremendous power, as if he might put his foot upon Curt’s chest and shove so hard it would catapult him clear across the room.
“Why did you leave me in Venice?”
“I didn’t realize what I’d done until after you’d gone, I was miserable the whole week, I couldn’t wait to see you again.”
He didn’t believe a word of it. It was only now Curt faced eviction he saw what he stood to lose. He would never be taken in again. He wanted to break him, beat him until he bled. Never, never again!
The doorbell rang and there stood Collin. Without saying a word, he propped open the door with his shoulder bag, strode purposefully into the apartment, and started grabbing Curt’s things, carrying them out to the hallway. Curt called downstairs to have a luggage wagon sent up, and as soon as it arrived he began loading it by the elevator. Frederick stood by the credenza with his arms crossed, watching the operation, a sick feeling in his stomach. When the wagon was loaded, Curt headed back toward the apartment, his eyes still red from crying. For a split second, Frederick hoped he would ask once more to be forgiven, say it was all a colossal mistake, promise to be faithful. But then he saw Collin leaning against the cart out in the hallway, an insolent look on his face. Frederick’s pride stiffened. He took one step backward at Curt’s approach. At the same moment, as he was about to cross the threshold, Curt stopped in his tracks and looked at Frederick with incredulity and contempt. He reached inside his pocket, pulled out his key, and tossed it into the dish on the credenza. He grabbed Collin’s shoulder bag, turned, and walked away toward the elevator.
The door slammed shut.
Frederick looked around the apartment. The stillness was palpable. The spire of Grace Church rose up white outside the living room window. He felt tears coming on, but held them back. He’d been here before. Solitude, loneliness. He could certainly survive it again. Much better than being cuckolded, wasn’t it?
The men had finished loading up the station wagon in front of the Brokaw Mansion, slammed the rear door shut, got in front, and pulled away from the curb. The old woman stood looking out across the street for another moment, then turned and went back inside.
The children playing behind him had gone away.
There was something particularly desolate about a solitary Saturday evening in New York. The rest of the city was embarked on errands of mystery and play, but Frederick was alone with his sketch pad, nowhere to go, no one to see (he’d arranged to meet Deborah at the protest, but that wasn’t until next weekend—“I doubt we’ll have any more luck than we did with Penn Station,” she’d written in a note, “but what I really want is to hear about your trip to Europe”).
Tonight he might read or clean the apartment. He felt a rising panic. Neither of those things appealed to him. He could, of course, go to a bar. The Snake Pit, perhaps. But the thought of meeting someone new—conversing with a stranger—taking him home—undressing him—all the unknowns of an unfamiliar person, an unfamiliar body (there was no more nail left to bite on his pinky, so he began picking at the skin alongside)—none of it appealed to him in the least. He thought of Curt’s bizarre string of telephone calls last night. Each time he answered, Curt tried to speak: “Frederick, it’s me, I need to—” “Frederick, don’t hang up, there’s something—” “Frederick please don’t—” Each time he put the receiver down. The last time, Curt said only one word. “Frederick…” For several seconds he stood with the receiver to his ear, listening to the sound of Curt’s breath. Then he put his finger on the hook. Like dropping an atomic bomb merely by pushing a button.
He wondered if there would be a message from Curt on his service when he got home tonight.
He closed his sketch pad and looked one last time at the Brokaw Mansion. It was hard to believe within a year it would be gone. The surrounding buildings didn’t flame up in protest. Cars wheeled by. Pedestrians strolled up and down the avenue. Birds glided down, alighting on ledges. An airplane soared majestically—but no, it was a bald eagle! How fine and strong its silhouette as it rode the air, its broad wings outstretched. He’d read there were fewer than four hundred and fifty bald eagles left in existence.
Beautiful creature. Someone should protect it. Trap it. Never let it go.
The signs people carried at the rally in front of the Brokaw Mansion the following Saturday were less witty and imaginative than those at the Penn Station protest two years earlier. And the crowd was different. Noisier, angrier, less well-dressed, and younger. A speaker’s platform had been erected on the 79th Street side of the building, and protesters and passersby gathered around to hear one person after another make speeches on the importance of landmarks to the urban scene, the value not just of the Brokaw Mansion but of many other venerable
buildings, the atrocity taking place before our eyes day after day down at Penn Station, the breakneck speed of tearing down and building up in the city, the need to enact legislation already submitted to the mayor, the irony that next Monday begins “American Landmarks Preservation Week,” announced one day before the Times broke the story of the impending demolition of the Brokaw Mansion, and how fitting it would be for the mayor to send the bill to City Council next week to ensure this elegant old building, which has graced the corner of 79th Street and Fifth Avenue for seventy-four years now, will not be harmed. The vicar of All Saints Church and representatives of the local planning board, the Lexington Democratic Club of the Ninth A.D., the Village Independent Democrats, the Committee on Parks and Playgrounds, the staff of the Park East newsletter—all were out in force.
“Kind of takes away the fun, doesn’t it, when everyone gets in on the act,” Deborah said laughingly after the rally, as they crossed Fifth Avenue and entered the park. “But I guess that’s what progress means. It’s not so much like home anymore.” She had asked Frederick to walk her to the IRT on the west side. They hadn’t seen each other in over two months since his return from Europe, and there was a lot of catching up to do. But she was bursting with something important to tell him.
“Columbia University is starting a certificate program in restoration and preservation, and I’m thinking of enrolling!”
“You are?—they are?” Frederick was skeptical. He wondered if she were really qualified for an advanced degree.
She said it was being spearheaded by James Marston Fitch, whom she and Seymour knew socially. She’d worked with him in the campaign to stop Robert Moses from building the Lower Manhattan Expressway. She was especially friendly with his wife Cleo. “She’s an archaeologist—do you know the Fitches?”
“No—but—why are you thinking of doing this?”
“I’ll be forty-two next year, the kids’ll both be in college, and I’m looking around and thinking, what do I do now? I can’t just stay home and keep Seymour’s dinner warm. You know, I still ask myself what I want to be when I grow up!”
Frederick protested she was grown up.
“On the outside, yes, but not on the inside. Never on the inside!” She described the program, the courses she would take, the hours she would spend, the resources the city offered, and most of all the excitement of being part of something at its inception.
“I didn’t know you cared so much about preservation.”
“That’s a funny thing to say.”
“I just mean—”
“Of course I care! It’s what I care most about, apart from my children and my husband.”
“Yes, of course, I know, I know… How does Seymour feel about this?”
“He doesn’t know yet. I’ve been researching it on my own. I wanted to wait until I was one-hundred-percent sure before telling him.”
“What do you think he’ll say?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I think he wouldn’t notice if I put a paper bag over my head. He eats, sleeps, and breathes his work.”
“And what about the children? Who’ll take care of—I mean, things…around the house…while you’re in school?”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. “Frederick, I’m surprised at you.” He squeezed the thumb and forefinger of his right hand together to see if the pain from the infection had abated—not at all.
“I hope this won’t change our friendship,” he blurted out. Her silence was full of indignation. He tried to right himself. “But really, this sounds good. Good for you.”
“You think it’s a bad idea.”
“No—did I say that?”
“I can hear it in your voice.”
“My voice? I’m hoarse from shouting to save the Brokaw Mansion.”
“No, that’s not it.” But with men, she knew when to concede defeat. “Is something wrong?”
He hadn’t wanted to speak personally, but neither did he want to entertain too seriously her idea to go back to school. He simply couldn’t see her in an intellectual environment.
“It’s just that—I’ll be interested to know what Seymour says.”
“Well, it’s not really up to him.” She resumed walking.
“Who’ll pay for it, then?”
“Let’s not talk about it anymore. You haven’t told me anything about your trip to Europe.”
How to avoid the truth? “You know, oddly, there isn’t much to tell. It was wonderful.” (Again, he squeezed his thumb and forefinger together and felt stabbing pain.) “I mean, who wouldn’t love Rome, Florence—”
“But give me details! What did you do, where did you go? Did you see Reinhard in Munich?”
He briskly summarized their itinerary and described his meeting with Reinhard and the couple of hours they’d spent touring churches. “By the way, thank you,” he said, “for making the arrangements.” Interesting fellow, he said. She pushed for more details, but they weren’t forthcoming. Again she stopped and turned to face him.
“Frederick, dear, something is wrong, I can tell. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t sound enthusiastic about the trip.”
“Perhaps not. It was months ago and so much has happened in the meantime. It actually seems years ago.” (Once more, he pressed his fingers together to feel the pain.)
“How is your friend?” There. She’d said it. She felt on fire. But what are friends for?
“Fine.” His answer was practically an invitation to probe further. He started walking again, and she followed.
“What does he do, actually? I just met him that one time at the book party. I didn’t really get a chance to talk with him.”
“He’s…” Suddenly Frederick couldn’t remember what he’d told Deborah about Curt. He needed to remember so whatever he said now would be consistent. But he had absolutely no recollection of what he’d said. There were too many stories to keep track of, too many different people with different degrees of familiarity. Since Curt had moved out he’d spent much less time having to keep track of his stories, and now his story-telling was getting rusty. “He’s not living with me anymore.”
“I didn’t know you were living together.”
He was making things worse with each utterance! Had he not told her, or had she forgotten? Surely he’d told her. “He’s the son of an old friend. He’d just moved to the city and I was doing my friend a favor by putting him up for a few months. Until he could get on his feet. So now he has his own apartment and a job.”
She was pensive. He was sure he’d gotten tangled up in his stories. No doubt she was piecing it all together and deciding how or whether to respond to his lies. “And how did he like Europe?”
“He loved it. His first trip abroad.”
“And do you still see him now that he’s moved out?” He hesitated. “I mean—how is he doing now? What kind of job does he have?”
He said he works for an ad agency.
“Well, I didn’t, as I said, get much of a chance to talk with him at the book party.” They had reached Central Park West. The light was red. She was heading uptown to use the library at Barnard. She looked him in the eye. “But I liked him. He seemed so…”
As she searched for words, Frederick had the dreamlike sensation she was speaking to his heart of hearts. He wanted so much to know what she thought of Curt, what she thought of him and Curt together, but he would never ask.
“…alive.”
He hung on the word.
“I’m sorry I won’t be seeing him again,” she added.
It was only after they’d parted that he realized: she knew everything. He pulled off the bandage and sucked the blood just starting to ooze from his thumb.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Three weeks later, Frederick stood at the top of the steps of the Eighth Avenue Post Office, facing the back of Penn Station, reluctantly anticipating the trip to Reading and delaying his departure for as long as possible. Except
for the sign mounted on the columns above the entrance—“On the Way to You…NEW MADISON SQUARE GARDEN SPORTS CENTER, REDEVELOPED PENNSYLVANIA STATION”—from this side of the building you might never know it was in the midst of being torn down.
The scene inside the concourse, however, told a different story. Red steel beams, marked “BETHLEHEM” in large white letters, jutted up through the floor. Temporary waiting benches crammed what little floor space was left, along with makeshift ticket booths, magazine stands, a snack bar, temporary stairways, barricades, and cheaply-made signs, “Pardon Our Appearance,” redirecting passengers. The clock, suspended over the Eighth Avenue entrance, was wrapped ignominiously in a white sheet. He would almost be glad once the whole thing was razed. The congestion and confusion and, God help us, the noise—drilling, hammering, grinding, pounding, shrieking, all the way up to the glass ceiling and echoing back down again, but magnified a hundred times! Sheer bedlam!
The train ride, by comparison, was blessedly tranquil, and it afforded Frederick a chance to catch up on his correspondence (nothing from Curt—but why bother to hope? Curt wasn’t the letter-writing type, and even if he did write, Frederick wasn’t at all sure he would deign to respond). After a while he dozed. When he awoke, he looked out the window at the brown hills and cornfields of Berks County. His mother had taken another fall. Nothing serious, Marge assured him, but clearly it was time to start looking at nursing homes. He hoped nothing would come of it, ultimately. For Clare, despite her initial resistance to leaving the house at 13th Street and moving in with Marge, seemed to have adapted to the new arrangements just fine, as had Marge by all accounts. But she was insistent they look at nursing homes in the area, and rather than put up a fight, which for sure would provoke another confrontation over who should be looking after their mother, and God knows what else (he still cringed whenever he thought of her outburst at the reception after Pop’s funeral—but it was all in the past and should be forgotten—certainly no one in the family brought it up, never said a word, and that included Marge)—he realized the best approach was the path of least resistance.
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