A Strange Commonplace Read online

  Rockefeller Center

  I GOT TIRED AND BORED LISTENING TO HIM TELL ME about the afternoon, a few weeks ago, that his homburg, a ridiculous mouse-gray hat that made him look like a file clerk masquerading as a lawyer, blew off his head at Rockefeller Center, and rolled across the street to stop directly in front of a woman who picked it up and waited for him to cross over and claim it. I’d be ashamed to claim it, but that’s neither here nor there. The woman turned out to be someone he’d known in high school, a lovely girl whom he’d secretly adored. That was thirty-five years ago. They recognized each other, even though his hair was graying, and she’d put on about fifty pounds. She looked prosperous and beautifully groomed, and wore a camel’s hair polo coat with what he called “a reckless swagger.” It was a phrase he must have got from a magazine on how to live and what to do to be happy. They talked, and he asked her if she had time for a drink, so they went into a bar off Sixth Avenue. It was at about this point in his story that I more or less stopped listening, so I don’t know, with any accuracy, what happened next, although it’s possible that he became hesitant and coy with me about the rest of the afternoon.

  It doesn’t matter to me at all. He did say, and of this I’m fairly sure, that the woman remarked that not many men wear homburgs anymore, and that it made him look distinguished. Or maybe he said that she said “but” it made him look distinguished. I’m also sure that she told him that she’d been divorced for almost five years, her husband having left her for his twenty-six-year-old secretary. What a perfect situation for total disaster. I didn’t mention this, of course: he was stupidly seventeen again and smitten.

  It was especially boring and tiresome to hear him tell the story, again and yet again. How he bumped into the girl he’d been secretly mad about in high school, and there she was, right on the street. She’d picked up his homburg, which a sudden gust of wind had blown off his head, and waited for him to cross the street to reclaim it. He said that as he approached her, they recognized each other at the same instant, and that her face brightened as if the sun had risen in her heart. It was obvious that he’d picked up that unfortunate phrase from some noxious novel or maybe that feature on vivid language or whatever they called it, in The Reader’s Digest. He knew, he just simply knew, so he told me and told me and told me again, that she’d been as interested in him as he in her, all those years ago, but that things just work out the way they work out, or, in this case, don’t work out the way they might. He was babbling. She was married, had been married for years and years, with three grown children, one of whom she’d just had lunch with here in mid-town. She was on her way back to New Jersey, where she and her husband had just moved into a condominium. He went on and on and said they’d made plans to meet again, for lunch, somewhere near Rockefeller Center. I wasn’t paying all that much attention to him and made a show of looking at my watch, realizing, with some embarrassment, that I’d done the same thing when he’d first forced this story on me. I do recall that their planned meeting was imminent; he was so excited that he talked on, nervously, volubly, his face flushed and sweaty. I believe that Jung called this runaway speech “hysterical verbalization.” Amen. He was in this state, you must understand, over a woman of some fifty-five or so years, a woman as old as his wife. Was I missing something? Was he going to jeopardize his marriage over a grandmother? Good luck, I said, right. Really, yes, really good luck! I was still looking at my watch as I moved away, smiling foolishly at this foolish man.

  The homburg, which, for some ridiculous reason, he’d affected a year or two earlier, blew off his head near the Rockefeller Center rink, so he told me. I was hoping that he’d tell me that it had been crushed by a truck or stolen by some idiot, but it survived and landed at the feet of a woman who picked it up and waited for him to cross the street and retrieve it. She was a handsome woman in her mid-fifties, a little overweight, perhaps, but well turned out in a camel’s hair polo coat and a little snap-brim felt hat. When he got closer to her he realized that she was the girl—a girl no more, of course—that he’d loved to distraction in high school, a feeling of which she was wholly and absolutely unaware. He wasn’t popular or smart or good-looking or hip or tough or talented, and she was everything perfect, even though there were some stories about her and a couple of older guys who’d dropped out. He took his hat from her and she smiled and he called her by name, how amazing, how strange it was, he said, to meet like this after thirty-five? thirty-six years. But she wasn’t that girl, it turned out, not at all, and her name was not the name he’d called her. He insisted that she was, that she must be, that she had to be, and she backed away from him and told him that her husband was meeting her here any minute. Then he said something that I took for a sign that he was heading, soon enough, into real trouble, despite the testament to gravity and stability of his absurd homburg. He wanted to tell this woman the truth, that he was sure that if he could make her remember that she was once the girl that he’d worshiped, she’d be sorry for having pretended to be a stranger, she would become his lover, they would live the life that they should have lived all these years, these lost years! He said none of this, luckily, but put his foolish hat on, thanked her, and walked toward Fifth Avenue. But she was the girl, no matter what she said, she was the girl, the same girl as always, beautiful and remote and lascivious and cruel.

  His homburg blew off his head at Rockefeller Center. He’d bought and started wearing this hat after his wife admired an actor who wore one in a movie she liked, Clark Gable? or Gregory Peck? And he believed, too, that the hat made him look important, prosperous, and successful, although I told him, as nicely as possible, that an Adam hat doesn’t exactly say Money and Power. He apparently started running after the hat, which veered off the sidewalk into the street on the edge of its brim, “a grosgrain edge,” as he often remarked. He stepped off the curb and was about to check for traffic when he stopped to stare at a woman who stood on the opposite curb, watching the hat and him. He began to smile, according to a couple of people who were nearby, took a step or two toward her, and was about to call out to her, when a delivery van, barreling down the street, hit him and threw him thirty feet into the air. He must have been dead or near dead when he landed. The woman was, perhaps, one of the crowd that gathered, gawking and terrified, at his broken body and cracked head, but then she walked away and into her life, thinking, possibly, that the man looked familiar. The homburg simply disappeared. Perhaps some idiot took it.

  Another Small Adventure

  JENNY STARTS DRINKING THE MINUTE SHE GETS IN FROM work. An hour or so passes, during which time she keeps on drinking, tumblers of straight blended whiskey. A bronze figurine of a lioness with a lamb in its mouth stares at her from its place on the black-lacquered table, its blank metal eyes terrible. She stands, slumped against the wall, a glass of whiskey in her hand. She is so drunk that she is unaware that she has wet herself. She takes a drag on a cigarette, then drinks off half the whiskey and gags. She is still dressed in her office clothes, for what she calls her position in her place of business, but Mr. Neumiller would be shocked and disgusted to see her at this moment. She’s wearing a dark suit, a white blouse, and on her jacket lapel is affixed a small piece of costume jewelry, red and blue glass flowers perched on a spray of gold-plated stems. She bends over slightly, staggering away from the wall and then back again, and lifts the hem of her skirt to look, bewildered, at her soaked stockings and the puddle in which she stands, shoeless. She has no idea why she’s all wet underneath her clothes. She drops her cigarette and starts across the room to get another one from her purse, staggers again, reels, then falls heavily on her back, slamming her head against the floor and spilling her glass of whiskey. The radio, she realizes, is playing, a song that she likes, but what song it? and the singer is, the singer is, she can’t remember his name. I hope Poppa doesn’t come over tonight, don’t come over, Poppa, I’m fine, fine, fine. She says this aloud. She sits up suddenly, aware of her wet clothes, her discomfort, h
er helpless drunkenness, and abruptly knows why her clothes are sodden. Her eyes open wide and her mouth twists in selfloathing. She’s going to throw up, she thinks, she wants another drink, her head hurts, she wants to take a bath, she wants a cigarette, she can’t keep her eyes open, her mouth sags and she drools on her blouse, she wants Warren to come back and find her and love her and forgive her and take care of her and do whatever he wants. It’s a sin, but she wants to die.

  Saturday Afternoon

  1 WHAT A GREAT DAY, WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY! IT WAS raining, but that meant nothing at all, surrounded, as he was, by his wonderful daughter, Janet, healthy and sure of herself now, beautiful, really; and her son, Jack, his terrific grandson, bright and tall and personable. And, of course, Warren, his son, finally employed by a company in which his intelligence and considerable skills were being put to use. “Cutting edge, Dad,” Warren said, his arm around Claudia, his fiancée, a grade-school teacher, all of whose pupils were reading at grade level. “Or better,” Warren said, looking at her adoringly.

  2 THERE WAS LASAGNA, THAT HE’D MADE FOLLOWING Irene’s recipe, two big baking dishes of it, and a green salad with a savory, tangy vinaigrette, and plenty of crusty bread from Mazzola’s. “Great bread, Grandpa,” Jack said. “Yum, yum,” his mother said back. And, of course, two or three bottles of an excellent California Cabernet. For dessert, fruit and cannoli and sfogliatelle and rum baba and lots of strong coffee. Hennessy V.S.O.P. for those who wanted it. “Aren’t these Mom’s best dishes, Dad?” Claudia said. “About time, I’m glad.” “Wow!” Jack said, looking at the platters crowded with pastries.

  3JACK HAS MADE HIM A LITTLE BOOKCASE IN SHOP, EVEN though his real talents lie in math and science. “A whiz at physics,” Claudia said. “I can hardly add,” Warren said. Everybody laughed, and Jack blushed as Claudia kissed him on the cheek. “Didn’t take after your uncle,” Janet said. It looks as if Jack will have his pick of the good schools, given his grades: Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech. “He is so smart I could choke him!” Janet said. She looked fantastic now that she’d stopped drinking the way she’d been drinking. Absolutely fantastic!

  4 HIS SON AND CLAUDIA, WHO IS A LITTLE OLDER, IT seems, than Warren, will be married in the spring. She’d been married twice already, to men whom she supported until it became impossible. “They were cheating on her too, Dad.” “What are you two whispering about? Have some dessert.” They’ll be moving to Ohio, Cincinnati, where Claudia’s mother lives. Claudia’s brothers live nearby, but, well, “Brothers!” The old lady needs someone to look in on her from time to time, run some errands, do a little shopping, cleaning, the laundry once in a while. “She’s not as young as she used to be.” There are apparently plenty of cutting-edge jobs out that way too. “Plenty.” Cincinnati, it appears, is really the next big high-tech area. “Oh, sure.”

  5 BEFORE THEY LEAVE HE IS DELIGHTED TO LEND THEM some books, what a pleasure, what a real pleasure to see them reading again, after all those years of fun and, well, this and that. Janet borrowed Thomas Hardy’s Collected Poems and The Pictorial Key to the Tarot; Warren, Ficciones; and for Claudia, In Cold Blood. “Oh, great, I’ve heard so much about this book,” she said.

  6“SO LONG, SO LONG, BYE, SEE YOU SOON, KEEP IN touch, Give me a call, Give me a call, Enjoy the books, Stay dry, You have an umbrella?, Claudia will drop us off, Bye, Bye, Bye, So long,” and etcetera.

  7 HE LOOKED OUT ON THE WET, COLD SATURDAY STREETS, growing dark now. Something is missing, what? His children seem to be doing well, he has a grandson to be proud of, look at the bookcase he made me, what a sweet thing to do. It will be perfect for his reference books. And Claudia seems very nice, a pretty woman, too, and lots of women are married more than once nowadays, more than twice even. Warren knows what he’s doing.

  8 IT’S STILL RAINING, BUT HE’LL GO OUT AND RENT A video, something light and elegant and brilliant to help him shake off the curious sadness that possessed him.

  9Singin’ in the Rain.

  10 “CUTTING EDGE, DAD, OR BETTER. GREAT BREAD, Grandpa, yum, yum. Aren’t these Mom’s best dishes, Dad? About time, wow! I’m glad! A whiz at physics, I can hardly add! Didn’t take after your uncle, he is so smart! I could just choke him. They were cheating on her, too, Dad, cheating on her. What are you two whispering about? She’s not as young as she used to be, and my brothers? Plenty! Fantastic! I’ve heard a lot about this, what a sweet thing to do.”

  11ETCETERA, ETCETERA, ETCETERA. “THAT’S WHAT STORMS were made for.” So they say.

  The Alpine

  HIS BITCH OF A WIFE HAD GONE BACK ON HER PROMISE, as usual, of course. So that when he got to the apartment she told him that she and the boy were going on a picnic with her latest wonderful and understanding boyfriend, some horny bastard at least ten years younger than she looking to get laid regularly. The upright and noble young man had called that morning to say that he was closing his cute little organic greengrocery for the day to drive them all up to White Plains to a lovely little park that had a beautiful picnic grounds. Including a lovely little pond with lovely little ducks that the boy could feed lovely little bread crumbs. What a prince this humble shopkeeper was! For the love of Christ! he yelled, for fucking Christ’s sake! After I come all the way down here from Washington Heights on the subway you pull this shit? This is not our deal, our arrangement, this is my Saturday! She’d tried to call him earlier but he wasn’t home, it wasn’t her fault. Her amazing and stalwart boyfriend never took a day off or even closed early, this was special, couldn’t he understand? Couldn’t he try to understand? He could take the boy the next two Saturdays to make up for it, but now—he was so excited to go on a picnic, he’d never been on a picnic. She gave him a look of saintly patience, one that said I hold no grudges and I will never point out to you your past and present grievous failings and flaws of character. This is my Saturday he yelled again, this! God, how he’d love to slap her fucking silly. Well, where were you on a Saturday morning? I tried to call you a half a dozen times. None of your business where I was. And where’s the kid? Ah, the boy was out with her warm and attentive companion buying cold cuts and salads and baguettes and soda and wine and such, he wanted to help, he’s so excited about this, really. Do you want to wait and see him and tell him—Tell him what? he said. That I came all the way down here to let him know that we were gonna go out but now he’s out of luck? That’s O.K., though, he’ll have a wonderful day with the super boyfriend, who, when he’s not fucking his mother in every hole upside down and twice on Sunday, he can give him potato salad tips and how to feed the duckies. What a guy! I should have put the make on him myself. You’re a bastard, she said, sober or not, a real bastard. And you’re a whore bitch. He left, and for no reason, walked over to the Alpine, where he’d planned to take the boy to a Tarzan-revival matinee, then for a snack in Holsten’s, with a chocolate frosted, and then for a walk in the park down to the promenade to watch the ships for a while. The kid would be able to see that he wasn’t the drunken slob of a rotten father she’d certainly told him he was and had always been—born drunk, according to her. And the kid would slowly, after a while, get the idea maybe that he was his father, his real father, not the parade of bums, including this latest clown with the fruits and vegetables, in his mother’s pants every night. How did she get to be such a whore? He sat in the theater, loud with kids, the movie probably half over by now, as if it mattered. There they were, Tarzan and Jane and the weird monkey, everything was perfect, peaches, they never argued, never a cross word, they just laughed and swam and swung through the trees and ate bananas and coconuts and papayas, all the animals loved them, and at night they humped each other blind. Tarzan never looked at another woman, not that there was much to look at, a bunch of crazy jigs running through the jungle yelling ugga bugga bongo dongo while Tarzan and Jane looked down from their tree house, feeling each other up. He left before the movie was over and went into the bar next door for a drink. He hoped the hero storekeeper of a boyfri
end choked on his sandwich up in the woods in Yonkers with the ducks in the fucking pond. Her heroic and hardworking pal was choking on some organically produced pâté! How could he screw her while gasping for breath? Help! He settled himself on a bar stool and lit a cigarette, ordered a Fleischmann’s and a beer chaser. Tarzan was probably up under Jane’s little skirt made of hides or leaves or grass by now, they ought to show you that in the movie. He knocked back the whiskey and signaled the bartender for another as he drank down the beer. This was a nice bar, calm and quiet on a Saturday afternoon before the chumps came in with their whore girlfriends and two-timing wives. He’d sit for a while and have a few more, maybe, what the hell, get swacked. The alcohol had moved softly into his brain and, once again, the world was perfect. Tarzan’s world.

  In the Diner

  HE SAT AT THE COUNTER IN THE DINER WITH A CUP OF coffee and a cheese Danish, trying to remember, with a degree of clarity, something that had happened long ago, something fragile and insubstantial, so much so that it might as well have happened to someone else, and not necessarily someone else who was actual: a someone else who could have been his invention. An invented incident from a blurred past would surely be no less acceptable than his present poorly constructed, or, perhaps, arranged life. Or this someone else could have been a flesh-and-blood cipher that had once been him, but was no longer. Perhaps this was the best or the only way of thinking of the attenuated memory, that its protagonist had been a childish simulacrum of him; more perversely, perhaps he was but the adult simulacrum of the faded, all but obliterated figure of the child—who was standing in snow, in crepuscular gray light, and in—what was it?—a tunnel. A tunnel dug through snow banked on either side above him. His father was at the end of the tunnel, in a navy blue overcoat, a gray snap-brim fedora, and a silk scarf, snow-white with blue polka dots. His mother, a young woman of virginal beauty, holds his hand in her gloved hand, she smells of winter, a clean cold edged with a light perfume of delicate and unearthly flowers. It is intoxicating to the child. His father, now, is embracing his mother, their bodies pressed close to one another’s, and they kiss, they kiss in the snow before the door of the house. He has his arms around his mother’s legs, his face pressed into the soft wool of her coat, into her warm hip, he holds tightly to her legs, he wants to be embraced, he wants to be kissed, he wants to be his father. He is eating a green salad and a baloney sandwich with mustard in the bright kitchen. His mother pours him a glass of milk and says something to him, what? What does she say? She is still wearing the black dress with golden things on it that his father calls a knockout, a word that he really likes. He steps back to look at her, she’s flushed and smiling, and now, at the counter, he looks at her because he knows that he did not then know that she would never look that way again, because his father was disappearing, receding into winter days and nights, and that, by spring, his mother’s magical dress would be put away or given away or thrown away. He ate his baloney sandwich and felt, eating his cheese Danish at the counter, the emptiness of that little boy at the kitchen table, who could not understand the oddly desolate feeling that touched him. His father entered the kitchen, smiling, but his voice was hard and angry, and he could no longer remember what was said or done. There came to him an image of the table, on which stood a bottle of ketchup and one of Worcestershire sauce: there came to him an image of heaven.