Blue Rose In Chelsea (12 page)

     “Tell him to hell with Mephistopheles!  You want to see angels!”

~~~~~

     “Tell him to stick Beelzebub up his butt,” is Sinclair’s take on the Ring series.  “He’s not good enough for my Viv.”

     Sinclair has taken to calling me Vivien; ever since I bought the bowler hat he insists that I resemble Vivien Leigh in St. Martin’s Lane, and David has been dubbed, The Popsicle.  I stumbled upon Sinclair sitting in his signature black attire, on his brown stoop, smoking a gold cigarette and listening to the strains of the neighbor’s saxophone, but now he’s dragged me up to Central Park West, which is cordoned off because a movie is being filmed there.

     “He challenges everything I say.  It’s exhausting.”  I twirl before a window front, admiring my Dreamcoat in the reflection.  “It’s Princeton all over again, an occupational hazard of the Ivy League.  I think these academic types are wired for debates; it comes of years of always trying to prove to their peers that they are the smartest person in the room.  Ugh.”

     Sinclair is not sure what the movie is, or which celebrity we should be trying to sight.  He manages to nab two powdered sugar donuts for us from the crew’s refreshment table.

     “It’s flattering in a way.  It means he takes my opinions seriously enough to argue with me.”

     “Oh, pooh.  The English are insufferable,” the Scottish count sniffles.  The film crew continually scolds us to duck down or stretch taller, so that we aren’t in the shots.  “
It was much pleasanter at
home when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller and being ordered about by mice and rabbits.
”  Sinclair quotes Alice’s Adventures Underground.

     In fairness to David, I point out some of his gallantry: the roses, his genuine interest in meeting Dylan, the deferring to my choice of restaurant, offering to get tickets to American Ballet Theatre’s performance of Don Quixote.

     “Don Q?  That changes everything.”  Sinclair sashays back and forth, trying to finagle a glimpse of the mystery celebrity.

     “You said he was
out like dizzy trout
, not good enough for your Viv!”

     “We’re talking Don Q!  Who’s dancing Dulcinea?”
     “Susan Jaffe.”

         “Ah, that removes the Obstacle to The Popsicle.  He gets another chance,” he decrees.

     In all fairness, the evening with David wasn’t as bad as I’ve portrayed it to my friends.  There was something intensely pleasurable about being with someone who appeared panicked at the thought that he might not see me again.  David walked ever so slowly, and proposed all sorts of diversions, as if he was desperate to prolong the date.  I almost felt pity for him, realizing that’s me, when I’m with Evan.  It was like looking at myself.  I wonder if Evan can feel my desperation whenever we part.

     I tell Sinclair about how we turned a corner, only to see Evan’s magnetic presence in a poster plastered over a building in Little Italy.

     “He’s famous now, hobnobbing with models.  Soon he’ll be forever out of my reach!”

     “He’s hawking chewing gum.  He’s not Alexander the Great conquering Europe.”

     I gobble my sugar donut, energized by Sinclair’s assessment.  I quickly pad my face like a cat, trying to get confectionary sugar off my nose and cheeks as Sinclair gallops off suddenly, convinced he’s spied Meryl Streep.

~~~~~

     I submit a short story to a New York literary magazine.  The story is rejected, but the editor invites me to a writing workshop in her home.  There is no charge for the workshop; it’s just something that she offers to a small select group of writers that she feels shows promise.  Her apartment is up on One Hundred and First and Riverside Drive, in a neighborhood whose stone exteriors seem to glow under the streetlamps.  Dylan wants to accompany me.  He wanders off somewhere while I attend the workshop, assuring me that he’ll meet me back there in two hours time.

     We gather in the living room, which has a European feel to it, cluttered in an artistic sort of way, lots of rich Persian carpets, and antique furniture, and shelves upon shelves of books and artifacts from travels.  There are four of us in the workshop; a woman in her thirties who works in advertising and hopes to make a career change to writing; a man with one of those striking voices that projects so well it makes one imagine he must be in theatre, and who directs most of his conversation directly to the editor as a teacher’s pet might; and a retired gentleman with an easy and gracious manner who reminds me of my father.  His stories are the best, in my opinion; he has lived an interesting but unassuming life, served in the war, worked various jobs: salesman, harbormaster, mechanic; he has raised a family.  He has stories to tell, and he tells them simply and without the affectation and overt literary devices that the rest of us resort to.  He jokes about his lack of writing credentials and education as compared to the rest of us, and his humility is endearing.  When the workshop breaks up, and the others gather about the editor, the gentleman hangs back, and I hang back with him.  I make a point of telling him that his writing was the best.  It takes some work to convince him, but I know that I won’t be returning to this workshop, and I want him to know this.

     “How was it?” Dylan asks as he leads me back to a place he spotted where we can grab a bite to eat.  The evening is cool, and Dylan wears his leather jacket.  I can smell the leather.  I tell him about the editor, how she’s originally from All Souls, England, how she’s written her share of acclaimed books.

     “That’s right up your alley.  An English mentor, someone who can guide you.”  I don’t have the heart to tell him just yet that I don’t plan on going back.  I’ve done my share of writing workshops.  I never feel at ease reading my work aloud, and can’t see the point of reading to other amateurs like myself.  Writing workshops can be brutal, all the egos, the insecurities, the lousy advice.

     I break the news to Dylan that Sinclair secured me an interview for a nanny position with the couple who own the brownstone where he lives.  I’m a shoo-in for the job, Ivy-League educated, plus I can speak English, which none of the previous nannies could.  The job is five days a week, and comes with a free apartment which is back-to-back with Sinclair’s, on the fourth floor.  I’m free to eat meals with the family if I wish, which would save me on groceries, and the salary is two hundred dollars a week.  I’m to look after their three-year-old son, Felix.

     “You gave up Princeton to work as the hired help?  That’s just rich.”  Dylan needs another beer after hearing this news.  We’re sitting in Le Petit Beurre, eating what else? A little bit of bread.

     “You said yourself that I would need at least a couple thousand dollars to get my own place in the city, and we all know I haven’t got a penny to my name, but this is an opportunity for an instant apartment.  It’s in a great neighborhood, with all the shops on Columbus Avenue, and the park a block away, and a café two doors down.  It’s within walking distance of a ballet studio, and the Museum of Natural History.”

     “I’d rather you stayed on longer with me, and got something more prestigious than that.  Something in publishing maybe.”

     “I don’t want to exhaust all my creativity and mental power editing other people’s books.  I want to write my own books.  I know if I can just have some time alone, if I can lock myself up in that little apartment, to go within myself, I can pull something great out of me.”

     “Couldn’t you have just locked yourself away in your dorm back at Princeton, and pulled something great out of yourself?” Dylan says through a mouthful of chips.

     I break the news to Dylan that my advisor in the English department did not like me.  She took under wing only those writers who mirrored back her morbid vision of the world, those who wrote obsessive stories about the hopelessness of the human condition.

     “I don’t think life is hopeless.  I think it’s magical.  And why wouldn’t I?  I’ve had a happy life, with Mom and Dad, and you, the greatest brother in the world.  Maybe I have nothing to write about.  Literary novels always have unhappy endings.  How did Tolstoy put it in the first line of Anna Karenina, ‘
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
.’  All the books with happy endings are formulaic, like the romance novels.  They’re not taken seriously, not that I’ve ever cared about being taken seriously.”

     “Someone’s taking those books seriously.  Mom is always talking about how her favorite author has made mega millions, and lives in some colossal pink mansion.”  Dylan is referring to Barbara Cartland, whose novels Mom loves.  “Well, don’t go looking for misery just to give yourself material for stories.”

     “
Why should I believe in tragedy?  I’ve never seen any.  Stories ought to have happy endings; people ought to be more interesting, everyone ought to have better taste
.  That’s a quote from the writer Harold Brodkey.”  I show Dylan my autographed copy of Brodkey’s
First
Love and Other Sorrows
that I bought at Gotham Book Mart.

     “Where does this guy teach?  Can we get you enrolled there?”

     I pull the book away and dump it back into my duffel bag before Dylan gets ketchup on it.

     I tell him about the nice young writer, Paul, who works at Gotham; how Paul always takes my list of books the moment I descend the stairway, how he proceeds to climb ladders or crawl under end caps, to locate them for me.  I’m hoping to throw Dylan off the scent of Evan.  “Maybe I’ll just invent my own genre: the literary romance.  I’ll become the Jane Austen of the twentieth century.”

     “You do that,” Dylan retorts, with a last gulp of Guinness beer.

     A homeless man taps on the wall of windows of the café, gesturing to our untouched basket of bread.  Dylan wraps it up in a napkin and we carry it out to him, along with a turkey sandwich that Dylan buys for him.

     We head down to the Centerfold Coffee House on West 86
th
to a poetry reading where Brandon is reading some of his work.  It’s strictly a no-frills gig, with a table that offers cookies for a nickel and a cup of cider for a quarter.  My brother buys me some goodies, and we settle into seats.  Dylan looks as if someone is extracting his toenails one at a time with pliers as we listen to poet after poet recite his or her works-in-progress.  At the intermission Brandon joins us.  I praise him on his unusual imagery, while my brother sits with a puss on his face.  Brandon informs us that he is planning a costume party for Halloween.  I needle Dylan, in punishment for his not finding anything redeeming to say of Brandon’s poetry.

     “I was thinking you could be The Grinch,” I suggest to Dylan, struggling to keep a straight face.  “You have a green shirt, and I could lend you a pair of my green tights.  You’ve got a gigantic head, and you’ve got big enough feet.  We’d just have to attach some paper maiche’ to the toes of your shoes to make them pointy.”

     “Pointy shoes and green tights?  Oh, that ought to have the women flocking in droves.  Is my head gigantic?” Dylan consults Brandon, who shrugs.

     I come in for the kill.  “And you’ve got The Grinch paunch.”

     Dylan feels for his stomach under his leather coat, probing like a doctor for the alleged paunch.  His self-doubt lasts but a second; satisfied that his stomach is flat enough, the old smug demeanor returns.

     “The Grinch is a great idea.  Don’t take all the credit for it when you win a prize!”  I have to turn away to keep from laughing.

     Dylan informs us that he won’t make the party; he’s going to be driving Mom down to Maryland for an extended stay with Dad that week.  Dad has not been happy in his retirement, so he signed on for a tour of duty with the Air National Guard at Andrews Air Force Base three months ago.  At first Mom was delighted at the prospect of being on her own for the first time in forty years, of not having anyone to cook for, or clean up after, no kids or husband making demands upon her.  But that got stale after a month or so, and now she’s missing Dad.

     “You’ll still come, right?” Brandon asks.  “I think Evan is coming home for it.”

     My heart flutters at the mention of Evan, my head suddenly swirling with thoughts of what to wear.  Dylan’s attention has been riveted all evening on a pretty redhead who at that moment wiggles up to the podium to recite her poetry.  Dylan sits up taller in his chair, confident that he’s caught her eye.  She’s dressed head to toe in black, no makeup, perhaps to alert us to the fact that she’s a serious person who does not take the business of existence, or poetry, lightly.  I glance down at my whimsical Dreamcoat with its colorful quarks, my jeans embroidered at the ankles with pink lace, my herringbone print pumps with black bows on the toes, which seemed like such a great find on the clearance rack only yesterday.

     “God called me the other day,” the redhead recites portentously.  She punctuates this gem with a Long Pause, and a sweeping glance that implies we’re in for something clever beyond belief.  “Collect.”

     People applaud.  Dylan rolls his eyes and slouches back in his seat, nabbing my last cookie.  “You can go as Barbara Cartland, minus the millions.”

~~~~~

     I’m hired for the nanny job on the spot.  My charge is three- year-old Felix Wingtrape IV, who turns out to be a sweet little curly-haired nymph of a thing who can barely speak two words of English.  On my first day Esme the maid tips me off that I’m the ninth nanny little Felix has had since birth, the last one having lasted barely two months—although she does not offer information on the reasons for these short tenures.  I am the only English-speaking nanny Felix has ever had, which would account for his almost nonexistent vocabulary.  Esme gives me the dirt on the Wingtrape parents—Randolph Wingtrape is a trust fund brat who dabbles in various businesses, and is rumored to have a problem abusing prescription drugs.  His wife, Althea, is a bigwig in the fashion field.  Randolph is her second husband; her first husband, Melvin, lives in the first floor apartment.  Melvin and Randolph were best friends before Randolph stole Althea away, but now they are all chums, according to Esme.