America America (26 page)

II

T
HE ELEVATOR WAS OLD
but elegant, with a sliding iron grate instead of a door. Lamps and hallway tables slid into view as I rose, then slid away again, and at the top floor there was another flight of stairs. The apartment had been added on to the roof. A metal door opening onto a tarred deck holding a few trees in pots next to a railing that looked out over West Eighty-sixth Street. Then across a hodgepodge of antennas and water tanks to a tiny slice of the Hudson. Above it, the dim lights of New Jersey. From the front door, I could see a crowd.

The main room was small, and so was the deck, and both were filled. So were both tiny bedrooms and the even tinier kitchen, which I passed through as I searched. But I couldn’t find Christian. A door connected the bedrooms so that the whole apartment made a loop, which I circuited and then circuited again to be sure, sidestepping my way through. The walls were hung with small, colorful quilts that looked South American and a number of unframed oils that might have been done by art students—maybe painters were her new friends. Finally I gave up and poured myself a glass of bourbon from a bottle that was on a table. I’d worn a tie and a very nice wool coat Holly had bought me in a secondhand store in Bryn Mawr. I was overdressed.

I loosened my collar, then made my way outside and found a place near a bench at the railing to take off my coat. Sure enough, a couple of art-school types pushed through next to me, talking about a Mondrian show at the Guggenheim. I listened to their conversation: it made me want to move to New York. We were all so close to one another that anyone watching would have thought I was part of their group; but really, I was just looking out across the river, resting my foot on the bench, wondering why I’d come.

A voice from behind me said, “Oh, the tie again.”

I turned. It was Clara.

“I thought I’d have better luck with it this time,” I said.

“Well, I guess that’s not asking too much.”

We hugged. I remember it well because I wasn’t sure what would happen. The last time we’d really spoken was at my mother’s service. That was two years ago now.

She said, “I’m afraid Christian’s not here.”

“She’s not?”

“Sorry.”

She stood there. She was wearing a gray cashmere sweater, like one Holly wore. Slightly overdressed herself. Perfume, too: orange petals. I took a drink of my bourbon.

“That’s kind of an unusual way to give a party then,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” She shrugged, not unkindly. “And you came all the way from Philadelphia.”

“I had to be in New York anyway,” I said, “for something else.” I tried to think of what that might be. It’s possible I was blushing. I turned and gestured over the rooftops. “So—I guess this isn’t her place then?”

“It’s
ours
. We share it.”

“Kind of small for two, isn’t it?”

“Not if you knew the rent.”

We were pushed up close by someone moving behind. “Small for two hundred people, anyway,” I said.

I didn’t really want to be talking like this. That’s what I realized at that moment. She’d been generous to me at my mother’s funeral, and that was the one memory I’d kept, somehow—her steady presence next to me with a plate of crackers and a glass of iced tea. I decided to be quiet. To wait a few more seconds before we started again. Just then a fire engine turned on its siren, and we stood there as it rumbled by, shaking us all the way up on the roof. I wonder if she was thinking the same thing. She was quiet, too, until long after the engine had passed. We both looked out. It was an interesting silence, like the middle page of a book.

When she finally did speak, her voice was different. “She’s had a hard time lately, you know.”

“I do. I can imagine.”

“Parties especially. They’re the worst, naturally. With everything. She hoped to be here tonight. If she’d heard you were coming, she would have, I’m sure. But I don’t think you RSVP’d, did you?”

“I don’t think so. Sorry.”

“She never knows how she’s going to feel, anyway. It might not have mattered. Sometimes it’s one way, sometimes it’s the other. She was happy to see you, though.”

I looked at her.

“At Linden’s,” she said.

“Oh, that! I was happy to see
her
.”

She smiled. “But a little nervous.”

“Is that what she said?”

“She told me you were there with your girlfriend.”

“I guess I was.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Although you didn’t admit it.”

“Ah,” I said, nodding. Somehow, my glass was empty.

“Actually, I think she thought that was sweet.” She sat down on the arm of the bench. “I think she was flattered.”

She looked up then, her sweater lifting slightly at the ends of her collarbones. I think another fire engine might have gone by. I didn’t answer. She just kept looking at me. Neither of us moved. Finally, she knit her brow. Then she turned to the railing again.

“She’s had a hard time, Corey. Like I said. You might not recognize her if you talked to her.”

“I know. That’s how she was at Linden’s. I
didn’t
recognize her. Not at first, anyway.”

“Dad used to say, ‘If you begin in certainty, you end in doubt.’”

“Which means?”

“Just what it says.”

To the west, the river was a gap in the necklace of lights. Down Eighty-sixth Street, I could see a black slice of it. “And Christian began in certainty?”

“I think she did.”

“Then what happened?”

“She takes everything hard, I guess. So did I. But I guess she took it harder. Christian’s always been that way. It’s in our family, you know, the kind of thing she’s going through. I still cry all the time. But my sister—it’s a lot worse. She hasn’t forgiven any of them. I guess she’s ended in doubt.”

I heard the elevator grate rattling. Inside me, the bourbon stretched out its arms.

“Or maybe not ended,” she added. “But that’s the way she is now.”

“Actually,” I said, “
you
always seemed to be the one who began in certainty.”

She stood again and leaned on the rail next to me. “Is
that
what you thought?”

The bourbon stretched again. “Well, at least,” I said, “I was always, you know—well, afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of you.”

“Since when?”

“Since you jumped in. In the middle of Lake Erie.”

“Oh, I see—that.” She touched her throat. “I wasn’t sure you’d seen.”

“Of course I saw. I was watching.”

Again we were silent. I heard the short, down-turned warning yaps of a hundred cabs on Broadway.

“Actually,” I said, “I thought you were ferocious.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Now the distant, geared rumble of some kind of street machinery. The subway’s screeching stop.

After a time, she said. “I know you did, Corey.” She shook her head, still looking over the rooftops. “And you were right. I
was
ferocious. I guess I
felt
ferocious. And I wanted everyone to think I was. It’s strange to say, but I wonder if I always knew what was going to happen. Like I was getting myself ready.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry. In the end, it’s what kept me alive. I was going about it all the wrong way. But that’s the thing that ended up saving me. I guess. When everything stopped.”

She turned and looked back at the deck. There was no ring on her finger.

“It’s a funny thing to say,” she said, “but that’s how I think of it now. Everything
stopped
. And my sister and I just kept hurtling on.”

“I truly am sorry.”

“I know you are. So is everybody.” She lifted her arm and waved at someone in the crowd. “But let’s not be so gloomy.” She waved again. “I
did
start in certainty,” she said. “I was certain you’d jump in after me.”

“Fall in, maybe.”

“That would have been fine.”

“I was afraid to go near the side.”

“That’s why I was standing there, you know. I thought you’d get over it.”

“I was holding a pie.”

“You’d already put it down.”

“Had I?”

“Yes. Strawberry-rhubarb. Not too sweet. Your mother was a good baker.”

“Thanks, Clara.”

“Just the right amount of butter.”

“That’s quite something to remember.”

“Oh, I can still picture it perfectly,” she said. “You set it on one of the coamings. Father saw that and moved it into the cabin. It was getting sprayed.” She wedged around to face me. “I started in certainty, and now I’ve ended in certainty. Is that one of the combinations?” She knit her brow again. But after a moment, her look softened. “Actually, I like you in a tie, Corey,” she said. “Do you know that? It’s really very nice.”

T
HE ANGRY CALLS WE GET
at the paper aren’t all about Henry Bonwiller. We get them about JoEllen Charney, too. And there was a new rash of them, believe it or not, soon after the Senator’s funeral. Last week, a woman wanted to speak to me.

“You want to know where the little tramp’s body is?”

“Who’s this?” I said.

“In the stone quarry.”

I knew it wasn’t a local. A faded accent—Georgia maybe, or the Carolinas—and the wrong words. For some reason nobody around here calls it a stone quarry. It’s either lime quarry number one or two, or the granite mines.

“Whose body are you speaking of, ma’am?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Henry Bonwiller’s cheap little thing.”

That’s because there’s been a rumor around for years that JoEllen’s body was never found. The rumor’s not true, of course. She’s buried in North Hall Cemetery, near Pinewood, underneath a white marble marker with two doves and a tiny flag etched on it, and after she was found but before the burial her body was in the morgue in Islington for ten days. Some people wonder about that many days in the morgue, but we’re a small county and our medical examiner happened to be away when she was found. There was an autopsy at the end of that time, too—whether or not you believe what it concluded. And I know plenty of people who do.

O
N THE AFTERNOON
of February 26th—I know the date because I’ve read the history—I was in the downstairs atrium putting together position sheets for the statewide papers when I heard a whooping shout from the upstairs study. It sounded like Henry Bonwiller. And a moment later, Mr. Metarey. Presently the door opened and the Senator leaned out. He came to the hallway railing, next to where the Secret Service man sat reading the paper, and looked down. When he saw nobody but me he said, “Well, shoot! Get on up here, boy, right now!”

“What is it, sir?”

“Got some good news. Get up here, before you miss it!”

That morning I’d taken the bus home from Dunleavy, fearing that this weekend with the campaign was going to be my last. I’d begun to steel myself to finishing out the year, too, using my weekends to get ahead on my classes until it was warm enough for soccer. Henry Bonwiller now trailed Muskie by thirteen points. Aberdeen West was at a fraction of its normal capacity, and the bustle of all the reporters, which had given the house a constant air of anticipation, had dwindled to almost nothing. Mrs. Metarey was gone; so were Christian and Clara, and most of the campaign staff had driven north to Nashua and Manchester for a final push before most of them, no doubt, would switch, to Muskie or now maybe McGovern. The marble entrance halls echoed.

I climbed the stairs and entered the library. There was no one there but Mr. Metarey and the Senator. On TV, Walter Cronkite was talking about the trial of Angela Davis that was set to begin in California. “Change the station,” the Senator said. “It’s got to be on one of them by now.”

Liam Metarey did. First he turned to ABC, where Harry Reasoner was speaking outside a banquet hall in Peking.

“No, no. That’s not it.”

“I know that, Henry,” said Mr. Metarey. “I’m looking.”

“It’s Muskie,” the Senator went on, turning to me. It might have been the first time he’d ever addressed me outside the car, other than to give an order. “We just got a call. Some dinky newspaper ran a piece about his wife. Says she smokes and drinks—”