Not That You Asked (9780307822215) (36 page)

When I arrive, there are as many as a hundred homeless people sleeping on the floor in various areas, covered with newspapers or tattered blankets. The public toilets in the station, originally built with the best plumbing fixtures available and made of the finest materials by the best craftsmen, are filthy sump holes now, abandoned to the homeless. Building management tries, perfunctorily, to clean the rest-rooms but it's a losing battle.

No traveler using Grand Central considers descending into the bowels of the building to use the toilet facilities. Not all the homeless bother to use them, either. They relieve themselves in the hundreds of recesses around the building. The little alcoves on the great ramp leading to the lower level of the station and to the superb Oyster Bar reek of urine.

Every day at midnight, the homeless are cleared out of the building and taken to what we once indelicately referred to as “flophouses.” The homeless, like the rest of us, have their favorite places to be and every morning they're back in Grand Central.

Am I heartless if I resent the intrusion of these people, who cannot cope with life, on the beauty and efficiency of this public facility … and, to some extent, on my consciousness? Why did we bother to erect such a magnificent place? I have the clear impression that society feels sorrier for these people than they feel for themselves. If they are desperately unhappy, I don't detect it. Many of them are mentally unstable or alcoholic.

People in New York are divided about how they feel. One group yells, “Mea culpa! Take care of them!” Another group shouts, “Leave them alone! They have rights!”

As an observer, I have the clear feeling that the proud homeless who genuinely need and deserve our help because they are hungry, cold and jobless through no fault of their own are largely invisible. They are not on the floor in Grand Central.

Several years ago, New York State decided it was paying for the care of too many people who were mentally ill. It turned them out of institutions, and many of those people are on the streets of New York now. They are mostly harmless and, I suspect, happier than they were when they were institutionalized even though they don't eat regularly and are often cold on winter nights. Their presence in public places lessens the quality of life for the rest of us. Do we owe them that?

Recently Ed Koch, the mayor of New York, decreed that the mentally incompetent were to be removed, forcibly if necessary, from the streets. By “streets” he also meant such public havens for them as Grand Central. The edict did not include all the homeless, just those someone decided were “mentally disturbed.”

Each of us thinks everyone else in the world is a little crazy. Exact definitions of what constitutes being “mentally disturbed” are hard to find. Many of these vagrants are, if not crazy, at least very eccentric. At what point does someone's eccentricity intrude on other people's freedom?

The argument rages in the courts of New York City. When it's over I hope the homeless have a home and we have Grand Central back, floors, men's rooms and all.

Let me tell you a heartbreaking story of people with no place to sleep at Christmas.

Once upon a long, long time ago there was a house on a hill owned by a writer and his wife. They had four children and five bedrooms. Three of the children were girls and one was a boy. Two of the three girls were twins and sleeping accommodations in the house were ample.

Ah, but that was long ago. The house still has five bedrooms but since Margie took over one of them as her workroom, the bed that was there has been replaced by a convertible sofa that is only made into a double bed in an emergency and even then the foot of it hits her file cabinets.

Two of the remaining four rooms have single beds. The other bedroom sleeps two. Counting the convertible couch, this makes places for eight sleepers.

Our four children come from London, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington for Christmas. They are no longer little kids and they don't come alone. The twins, with one husband each and three children between them, come as seven. Nancy, my sister, is with us.

To save counting, that's twelve in all … twelve people in a house with real sleeping places for eight.

The couch in the living room and the old couch that was retired to the catch-all room in the basement are pressed into service. That's ten. I've never gotten into the details of where the others go. We close our bedroom door and hope for the best. We have two television reporters in the family but we've never seen overcrowding in the shelters they do stories about at Thanksgiving that can compare with the squalid conditions in our house at Christmas. It's enough to bring tears to a grown man's eyes.

There are clothes, open suitcases everywhere. The three bathrooms are strewn with stray toothbrushes, hair dryers and an assortment of beauty products … although I can't tell from looking at any of the six women in the house which one uses them. The refrigerator, the washing machine and the dryer get heavy use. The iron is never cool. Someone is always washing himself, herself, hair, clothes or the car. Because of nighttime sleeping conditions, there is random couch-nap-ping
during the day and some of the beds are working more than eight-hour shifts.

One year we rented two hotel rooms and another year we used the house of friends who graciously offered it while they were away for Christmas. Neither of these alternatives is popular with the family members who have to leave the chaotic, friendly warmth in our house Christmas Eve to go to sleep in a strange place.

All things come to an end and I dread the end of Christmas at our house. I'm not sure how or when it will come. Someone will probably decide it's too hard. The friends who loaned us their homes have made the Big Switch. They now go to the home of one of their children for Christmas. It could happen to us, I suppose. One more husband, one more wife or another grandchild might do it … but then where does everyone go? Do we break up the family and have separate Christmases in different parts of the country? Would this really be as merry? Am I suffering post-Christmas depression? I've thought a lot about it and I've decided what I want for Christmas next year.

I'd like Santa to bring me an addition to our house with two more bedrooms and another bathroom, even though they'd be empty 363 days a year.

Angela Nicolaysen

Weichert Realtors

Mendham, N.J.

Dear Angela,

Thank you for your letter, sent to my home in Connecticut, offering me a home in Mendham, New Jersey, for either $2.45 million or one for $2.55 million. If I take both of them, do I get anything off? From the drawings you sent along with your letter, I can't tell the difference between the two houses. Why is one so cheap?

I'd want to see the actual houses, too, because those dreamers' sketches of buildings never bear much resemblance to the way a place actually looks when it's finished.

You refer to the houses as “homes.” “A house,” as someone famous once said, “is not a home.” When the builder finishes it and it's sitting there empty, as the places in your sketches are, it's not a home. It's a house. It isn't a home until someone moves in and leaves their belongings all over. I know “home” is a more attractive sales word.

I've been trying to figure out why you choose me to send your sales letter to. The only thing I can think of is you drove by my home and decided I could do better.

That's a pretty insulting thing for you to do, Angela. Yes, the place needs a little work but I'll be getting at that, probably, as soon as my vacation is over. I know, for instance, there are places that need paint.

Your letter reminded me that it wouldn't do any harm if I had a couple of loads of topsoil brought in so I could reseed the lawn and get some real grass growing.

The day you drove past, there may have been a beer can down front. Kids do that driving by once in a while, but listen, Angela, I can buy a lot of paint and topsoil for $2.45 million. The beer can I'll pick up myself. You say Mendham and the surrounding communities have “enticed a number of celebrities, among them Whitney Houston, Jacqueline Onassis, Mike Tyson and Malcolm Forbes.”

I want to be honest with you, Angela. I've made good money the last ten years, but I don't have the kind of money Jackie, Mike and Malcolm have and, while I've never heard of Whitney Houston, I probably don't have the kind of money he or she has, either. If I showed up at their doors looking to borrow a cup of sugar from one of them, I doubt if I'd be dressed in the manner they've become accustomed to having their neighbors dressed. Mike Tyson is another matter altogether. If he was my neighbor I certainly wouldn't knock on the door and ask him for a cup of sugar.

Your letter is a persuasive sales pitch, but I do have some advice. You say that “This sophisticated, yet quaint rural environment is enhanced by its proximity to New York City … only fifty minutes away and easily accessible by car, train or bus.” Take out “bus.”

The idea of taking a bus into New York destroys the tony image you've tried so hard to create. If I moved out there, would I see Jacqueline Onassis, Mike Tyson or Malcolm Forbes on the bus coming into New York? I think your letter should read “easily accessible by limousine.”

I know Malcolm Forbes rides a Harley-Davidson. I don't know
whether he rides his motorcycle to work every morning or not but if, by any chance, he lived next door to me, maybe he'd pick me up mornings. I could ride in sitting behind him on his bike.

You're knocking on the wrong door here, Angela. The biggest problem for me with a house in Mendham, New Jersey, is it would be two hours away from home.

HOLIDAYS AND
VACATIONS
 

Free, Free at Last

Every one of us has imagined having something wonderful happen. We dream we suddenly discover a great athletic ability we have and win the big game or an Olympic gold medal; we think about having some distant relative die, leaving us an unexpected fortune; men dream of being in the company of Linda Evans, women in the company of Tom Selleck.

Recently I've been having a more practical dream. In this fantasy of mine, I'm arrested for some small offense. The judge sentences me to a year in prison. I am taken to a cell ten feet long and eight feet wide. In the cell, there is a bed, a chair, a desk, a lamp with a 100-watt bulb, a typewriter, a stack of paper three feet tall and, on a shelf above the desk, ten books.

Three times a day I am brought a simple, low-calorie meal that doesn't appeal to me. Each morning at seven, I am forced to take one hour of strenuous exercise and then returned to my cell. There is no telephone available to me, no television, no newspapers. I am trapped with only myself for company. There's no way to waste time, so I turn to the only things available to me, the typewriter and the books.

Then, in this prison fantasy of mine, I lay out my schedule. From 8:00 to 11:30
A.M.
, I work on a novel I've been meaning to write but never had time for. Then the guard comes with a glass of water and a tuna-fish sandwich on unbuttered bread for lunch. I hardly touch it.

After lunch, I take a little nap and then start writing a play. All afternoon I work on my play until the guard comes with a terrible supper at 5:30. Again, I eat very little.

Every once in a while, I stop writing my play or my novel and, for
relief, I write half a dozen letters to people I never got around to answering when I was on the outside.

From 5:30 to 7:00
P.M.
, I just sit and think, and then I start reading. With two exceptions, the books are ones I never really read before. They are:

Webster's Third International Unabridged Dictionary. I've always wanted to read it from start to finish but never had time. I get caught reading a little of it when I'm looking up a word but I always feel I'm wasting time so I stop.