Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) (24 page)

“You oaf! You expect a woman who cares not to care?”

He thought about this. “You got me.”

Feigning a prosecutorial tone, she said, “Now. You didn't talk to her about the whales, did you?”

“Are you insane? Of course not! The whales are ours alone.”

“Okay. I've got the information. It's history.” She gripped his arm in the old friendly way and, balancing on him, led him slowly further into the iced air next to the river to the railroad tracks. The dry cold air brought the Catskills closer. The mile across the iced-up river with the ridged small channel kept open by the Coast Guard cutters seemed much less.

“You must be in a lot of pain about his death,” Orville said.

“Yes, I am.”

They took several more steps along the tracks. The rusted steel diagonal beams at the mouth of the trestle dwarfed them.

“Want to talk about him?”

“He was a daredevil. I've come to think that, deep down, he hated himself. Couldn't stand being loved.” She hesitated. “Or maybe being loving . . . or . . . no, no.” She stopped talking. “Let's walk.”

They picked their way carefully onto the trestle and started walking through it along the bare ground between the rails of one of the two tracks, the one nearest the river. In the crisp air the scent of creosote was strong, making Orville think back to that field of childhood where he'd caught a glimpse of something else.

“What's really getting me isn't you and her,” Miranda said, “it's you and Cray.” Through his coat she felt him brace himself. “I'm worried about him. You saw how he was with you just now—after not seeing you for only two days? He's hungry for a dad, and, for better or worse, now you're it. It's scary, terrifying, really. I don't know how he'll survive when you go, in—what? Five months?”

“Five months is a long time.”

“With a child, five months goes like nothing. You blink, and he's six. You blink again, he's ten—twenty!”

“In five months anything can happen.”

“But if it's five months more and
then
you disappear?”

“Five months? I'm barely making it through a day! How can I plan that far ahead?”

“But I have to. I'm his mom.” She stopped and faced him.

“You want me to stay, but—”

“Started to want it, yes, but maybe not. I don't know—”

“You don't want me to stay?”

“I want you to bring it up. You never bring it up.”

“Do you?”

“I am. I am and all I'm getting is that I'm wrong!”

“Wait, wait—”

“I have waited, and—”

LROWWWWWWWWWaaaa!

A terrific blast came up from the earth around them. They snapped to attention as if slapped and saw a train speeding upriver from Columbia rounding the curve and coming onto the trestle straight at them, the sound rising up the chromatic scale as if running faster and faster to get at them or to overtake its own echo off the drumhead of the mountains. Another blast seemed to rise up from the throat of the trestle out at them and it was clear that the train could never in this life stop in time.

They froze, side by side on the edge of the ties between a steel rail and the girders of the bridge. Time slowed and sped. Orville knew there was only enough time for them to take a single step. Which way to go? Across to the other track? Jump from the trestle down a long way onto the icy creekbed?

Bodies are malleable.
Orville grabbed Miranda and, as if she suddenly weighed nothing, pulled her hard against a rusted strut of the trestle, his arm pinning her there as he tried to mold their chests and faces into the diagonal spaces.

The train was upon them.

Orville tried to envision how much room they had between the edge of the track and the girder and started cursing, “Shit no, not now not by a fucking train!” and praying, Please, for us and Cray and Amy!

They were buffeted hard by the outrageous sound and wind that seemed to last forever. But in an instant it was over. The train was moving fast away, wailing down the chromatic scale as if sad at missing its chance, rounding the bend upriver toward Albany.

They pried themelves off the struts, flakes of rust on their palms and under their nails. The air was filled with the edged scent of diesel. Trembling, their breaths coming in gasps that made little clouds in the air, they stared at each other wide-eyed, seeing the flecks of rust on each other's forehead and cheeks.

“There are better places,” Miranda said, trembling, “to talk about the relationship.”

They walked back slowly and stood at the door of the house.

“Don't tell Cray,” Miranda said, her hand on the doorknob.

Orville heard this as yet another example of her hypercaution with her son and wanted to say something, but knew he'd better not. His exhaustion, the stupid close call with death—he knew he was on the edge of sending out something contemptuous, but he couldn't quite say nothing. “Why not?”

“I don't want to scare him.”

He managed to say nothing, barely managed, hoping she hadn't sensed it.

“Come on,” she said, sensing it but not doubting herself on this one, not after the close call. “Come in.”

Cray was fractious. His worsening cough and cold (which made Orville think he ought to dig in his bag for antibiotics), his hour of video watching, the tension he was sensing between the two of them—all of this had wound him up. He glommed on to Orville, demanding that he pay full attention to him. Every bone in Orville's body was aching and yearning for sleep. But as a doctor he was used to making the normal superhuman efforts, and so he put himself on autopilot to try to do the same as a kind of father.

Cray first wanted to go outside and play soccer in the snow. Orville vetoed that because of his cold. Cray insisted on setting up a goal in the living room and, yelling “Happy feet! Happy feet!” tried to boot the ball past Orville. Miranda soon put a stop to indoor soccer. They then played knock-hockey, then checkers. Orville lost at hockey but won twice at checkers, which prompted Cray to swipe the checkers off the board onto the floor. Orville picked them up, patiently, wordlessly. Dinner couldn't come soon enough.

The adults finished a bottle of wine. By the time eight o'clock rolled around, Orville was yawning incessantly and Miranda was trying to keep her eyes open while sinking deeper and deeper into the soft old couch. Cray, sneezing and coughing, was still going strong. He refused to take Tylenol or go to bed unless they played one last game.

“Okay,” said Orville, “one more”—he yawned long and hard—“and that's it.”

“Animal Guessing Game. You think of an animal first.”

Yawn. “Okay.”

“But don't let me get it.”

“Okay.”

“Got it?”

“Yep.” Another run of yawns. Miranda, too, started yawning. “Guess.”

“But tell the truth, okay?”

“Right. It's a hard one, a very, very, very hard one.”

Cray squeaked with delight. “Is it a . . . a bottle-nosed dolphin?”

“Did you say a . . . a bottle-nosed dolphin?”

“Don't! Don't do it if it's not it!”

“I mean,” Orville yawned again, feeling a perverse wish to string the boy along, “are you really guessing a bottle-nosed—”

“Is it or isn't it?” Cray asked, not smiling anymore.

“No,” Orville said. “It isn't a bottle-nosed dolphin.”

“Then why'd you say it was!”

“I never said it—”

“But you made me think it was!”

“I was just kidding, just fooling around.”

“Cheater! You big cheater! I hate you! I'll never let you read to me again!” Cray started upstairs. Orville got up and took his arm to try to stop him, but this just made Cray fight back. He hit Orville in the belly and then, in a fit of coughing, fell on the stairs, kicking him from above.

“I'm sorry, but I didn't say—”

“You were just kidding me around, you big shit!”

“Cray!” Miranda said, getting up.

The boy ran up the stairs and slammed the door. Twice.

Orville looked at Miranda and felt ashamed. In her eyes was a question, which he read as, Why in the world did you do that? Crumpling up, he said, “I was just trying to entertain him, keep it going . . .”

“You don't have to. All he wants is you
here
.”

“Okay, I've had enough for one night. G' night.”

“Wait—”

“No, no. No. No matter what I do, it's never enough.” He grabbed his coat and walked out the door, tripping on the stone doorstep in the terrific dark.

He walked out to the Chrysler and then past it to the cinder bed on the edge of the river. It was pitch-black. The north wind hit him. He started to shiver but made no move to put on his coat.
Is this the end?
He felt hopeless, standing there seeing nothing. His shivering felt right—in all the deadness, a sign of life.

But then he started to really shake, his teeth chattering, his whole body vibrating, as if his bones were clattering against each other—the response of the body to bone-cold, and to terror. The harder he tried to stop himself shaking, clenching down with all the power of his will, the harder he shook.

Convulsed with cold, bent almost double, he tried to put on his jacket, shaking from his knees to his gut to his chest to his chattering teeth. Bursts of little cries escaped his lips. Bent low to the ground he made his way back to the Chrysler, an inch at a time. He tried to straighten up, his spastic fingers searching his pockets for his key. His eye fastened on the light over Miranda's front door. One of those bug bulbs, invisible to bugs so that in summer they're not attracted to the light. It glowed in the clear air, glowed golden over the old door.

In that house are the two people I love most in the world.

Miranda tried to comfort Cray, but he wouldn't open his door to her. Downstairs, as she passed the front door, for some reason she turned on the outside light. She sat at the kitchen table for what seemed a long time, listening to the wail of the north wind, feeling its cold fingers work their way through the chinks of the old house. She shivered, less from the chill than from the heartache that seemed to be all that was left of her.

Will he come back? Do I want him to?

He knocked, gently, on her door.

· 19 ·

The public hearing on the Worth Hotel took place several weeks later in the Council Chambers of City Hall at Fourth and Washington. City Hall was a brick structure built by the Quakers in 1805, during the first term of Mayor Caleb Starbuck, one of Bill's Nantucket ancestors. The ceiling was remarkably high, probably twenty-five feet. The row of windows facing the street was also high and narrow, and set much further up in the wall than in later styles. The standing-room-only crowd was restless.

Miranda and Orville sat together in the front row. Penny was beside Orville, and next to her were Henry, Nelda Jo, and Henry Jr.—the teenager in a white button-down shirt, red tie, and blue blazer and sporting a fresh, ugly black eye. Cray was with Maxie, back at the Schooners'. From Henry's direction came a faint scent of toasted oats and barley, of hearty and delicious breakfast cereal. Henry and Milt had recently moved their offices into the old Gadicke Feed and Grain Building, and after a day at the office the enticing aroma clung to them. Amy and Milt sat in a row with the other scheduled speakers, behind the low railing separating the audience from the council members and the mayor.

Orville was in a foul mood, preoccupied. The practice now was, as he had told Miranda earlier that day, “beyond belief.” March had been a month of prolonged cold. Columbians were hanging on to the year by their fingernails, waiting for warmth, waiting to let go—and mutilating each other's bodies and minds and pets and livestock and cars and TVs and homes and churches (yes, two churches up in flames and no one caught)—in the process. The countryside was sere and bare, the clumps of fruit trees looking less like orchards than like pegboards for an abandoned game, the leafless maples and oaks and beeches strung out along the windblown fields like broken power lines.

Today, driving back to the office from an emergency call to try to save two farmworkers who'd fallen into a manure tank and who were dead by the time he arrived, Orville found himself stuck out in the middle of nowhere behind an errant Wonder Bread truck, staring at its two bumper stickers:
JESUS IS COMING, LOOK BUSY
and
KEEP HONKING, I'M RELOADING
. Back in the office, in his mail was a postcard of Mount Fuji.

Hello, son,

Fuji crowded. Sushi mushy. Tokyo jammed so there's NO parking (get it?). Wolfgang and Kenni wearing thin. He's a dope she's depressed and a real yakker. Babs back is bad. Starbusol working okay, but supplies low. Best,

Bill

It was clear to Orville that Bill had no intention of returning to Columbia anytime soon, if at all, and that he couldn't care less what Orville did with the practice. Orville made a mental note to start looking into whether he himself could sell the practice before he left in August.

Mayor Americo Scomparza was the first speaker and proceeded to set the scene. The building had been vacant for many years and posed a hazard. The cost of restoration was hundreds of thousands of dollars; the demolition fee, $18,000. Five years ago the U.S. government, through HUD, offered to pay two-thirds of the demo cost. A contractor had been hired. The Worth Saving protests had begun. The venerable Helen Hayes, who had stayed at the Worth during her heyday, and Mabel Mercer and Harry Belafonte, both of whom had homes out in the county (Belafonte bought his after filming a B movie in Columbia,
Odds Against Tomorrow
) sent telegrams. A judge signed an injunction against proceeding. The Department of the Interior proclaimed that every effort should be made to preserve the Worth as part of our national heritage. Recently, Worth Saving had succeeded in placing the hotel on the National Register of Historic Places. This meant that Columbia could still demolish it, but they would get no money from HUD to do it.

“You mean those jerks lost us twelve grand?” said someone angrily.

“Uh-huh,” said Mayor Americo.

The crowd erupted in angry shouts and name calling.

“Bottom line,” the mayor went on, “we either leave it as is, or spend your tax dollars to tear it down or fix it up, or sell it to someone else to do it. It's zoned for any damn usage.” Leaving the podium, the mayor glanced furtively up and around to check out if anything was about to fall. Without incident he sat back down behind the railing in front. Columbians relaxed. The mayor had spoken and nothing had broken.

Next came the other scheduled speakers, alternating between pro and con. First, for Worth Saving, Mrs. Tarr of the DAR who, despite her tight dry cough, did well with her brief biography of Columbia's most famous son, William Jenkins Worth, and her personal reminiscences of organizing fashion shows and Junior League Balls and other charity events at the hotel over many decades. Next, against saving, Gus Clinton of Whale City Savings representing SPOUT. Then came Mrs. Clive Follywell, owner of Quite Dear Antiques, founder of CATS—Columbia Antique Traders Society—for saving the Worth, who also reminisced but went on at Melvillian length and soon lost what, if any, ground the spunky Mrs. Tarr had gained from the majority of the crowd—Columbians dead set against preserving Columbia in general, and the General Worth in particular.
May Carter, representing the hastily formed PALH—People Are Living Here, an alliance of poor people who lived “Downstreet” and who were against having to deal anymore with “that rat-trap hotel” and “want a Price Slasher of our own.”

The final speaker was Amy Plotkin. She stood front and center at the podium and began. “‘The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain of heaven, upon the place beneath . . .'” As she went on, color rose in her cheeks. She ended with a simple plea, “‘But mercy is above this sceptred sway, it is enthroned in the hearts of kings, it is an attribute to God himself, and earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice.'” She bowed her head.

Silence. Then a shout came from the back—“
Bravo, bravo, bravissimo!
” Greenie Sellers stood on a chair and in Italian words and gestures was encouraging the New Yorkers and antiquers to rise and join in, which they did. Amy bowed to their applause. Even Columbians rose and applauded. After all, she was one of them, Milt's daughter.

Flushed, Amy went on, “Please show the Worth some mercy. I'd like to close with a prayer.” She closed her eyes, bowed her head. “Dear God, please protect the beautiful old hotel where my dear grandma Selma was in fashion shows—from my
father!
”

It was Milt's turn. He got up and said he was representing Plotkin and Schooner, Developers, who would buy the property “in a flash,” pay for a safe demolition, and erect not just a Price Slasher Supermarket but a whole mini-mall, called the General Worth Mini-Mall, an architect's rendition of which he would unveil in a moment.

“Even my dear late mother-in-law, Selma Rose, declined to take part in Worth Saving. She wouldn't even drive past the place these last few years. We need to remove the infected tooth and put a gold bridge in there,” he said, glancing at Basch the dentist, “and so forth. We have to destroy the Worth to save it.” Many in the crowd nodded. Milt introduced his state-of-the-art computerized projector with which he would show slides. “Blinky, could we dim the lights?”

The lights dimmed.

Milt clicked on the computer and there was a soft
poof
and the chamber went black. Nervous laughter, then catcalls. It was a definite breakage, and in the dark the anxiety rose. The janitor lit a butane lighter and opened the fuse box. Luckily there was a spare fuse. He replaced the fuse and the lights went on—to cheers and applause. But Milt had forgotten to turn off the computer, so there was another
poof
and the same thing happened again. Milt called out that he'd turned off the computer, but the janitor called back that that was the last fuse. Someone shouted that they should use a penny, but that was shouted down. They were in the dark.

After some scurrying, and a lot of shin banging, a few candles and flashlights appeared on the speakers' table. The eyes of the crowd began to adjust to the dimness. An argon streetlamp outside threw in some light—pleasantly harsh, as if from a UFO—filtering down through one tall window. Soon, people could see well enough for the meeting to continue.

But as Milt went on—badly, without his slides—the crowd realized that the problem with the meeting wasn't the light but the heat. For several days there had been a bizarre warm spell. Now the air- conditioning, which had kept the room cool, had been knocked out, and the ancient radiators were still on, blasting heat into the crowded room. The janitor went down to the basement and, in a desperate act, disconnected the boiler, but he told everyone that it would take an age for the old radiators to lose their heat. The room was stifling. Folks suggested opening the windows, but even with the long gaff and with the strength of heavy Columbians, the windows remained stuck, as if nailed shut.

Milt sat down, sweaty and defeated, and the mayor said the meeting was now officially open to discussion.

Things got ugly and then dangerous. One problem with having light only at the front was that the audience was in darkness. No one could tell who was shouting at, or cheering on, the speakers. Supporters of the mini-mall, who talked about how much it would mean to them to have their very own mall to shop at, and how it might lead to other business coming downstreet like, say, McDonald's and Taco Bell, were cheered. New Yorkers, who tried to point out the priceless historic legacy and pledged to form a citizens' committee and hold benefits and hire consultants and look into urban renewal, were shouted down, despite the mayor's attempt to keep order. Mrs. Tarr, trying a rebuttal, was verbally attacked.

“Hey, lady,” someone shouted from the dark. “You don't even live here. You and your historical ladies are out having tea at Spook Rock, and I'm tryin' to keep my kids out of that dump, away from the drunks, the drug dealers, and the perverts. And rats. When's the last time you saw a rat?”

Before she had a chance to speak, someone else shouted, “Yeah, it's our taxes, not yours. You don't pay taxes in Columbia.”

“I pay my taxes in my public service. Given time, we can raise money privately to save the hotel. Fixed up, it can be a centerpiece for the whole downtown, the antique stores and homes—all of it, as well as for our bicentennial celebration next year. And the last rat I saw was two days ago.”

“But
I
pay taxes,” said Mrs. Follywell, founder of CATS, “and I and my antique store colleagues want to pay
more
taxes if it'll save the Worth. And I would propose, for the first time here, a special levy to do so.”

“Yeah, 'cause you can afford it.”

“Order, order,” shouted the mayor, banging his gavel.

Orville stood up and talked about the Worth being an important landmark in his growing up. “It was a place Dr. Bill Starbuck used to take me for lunch. That was when I first decided to become a doctor.
Your
doctor, and—”

“'Til August!” someone shouted.

“Shut up!” someone else shouted back. “He's a good doctor, so far.”

“He ain't no Bill Starbuck!”

“Thank God for that!” Everyone laughed.

Orville was startled. It was the first time he'd been ridiculed by Columbians. He sat down, shaken and then angry.

Greenie Sellers rose and, in his dashiki and green hair, gave a fiery speech peppered with Italian and German words. He was passionately on both sides, supporting “the grand old lady hotel and my New York
antico negozianti”
as well as “my oppressed proletariat, my fellow Downstreeters.
Ich bin ein Columbian!
” He was shouted down most cruelly.

The meeting spiraled crazily out of control. The heat was oppressive. Breathing was tough. Body odor took over. The obese, the pink puffers and blue bloaters representing Columbians With Emphysema, and the claustrophobes, left in droves. From the dark came shouts and accusations and muffled racist and sexist and homophobic jibes and whispers, all of which Americo tried to control with his gavel. The threat of new taxes, and the notion of a brand-spanking-new not just Price Slasher but in fact a
whole new mall
led to the portrayal of the Worth Saving crowd as “outside agitators and hippies.” The crowd started to feel like a mob.

Orville watched Amy, sitting up front, and saw how terrified she looked. He stood and motioned her to come back and sit with them. As Amy stood up, a familiar voice rose from the front row.

“Your Honor? May I have the floor?” Henry Schooner was on his feet.

“Uh-huh.”

Rather than stay in his seat like the other speakers, Henry moved to the center aisle and stood before the small gate in the low-railed barrier. He turned to Amy, who was standing on the other side of the gate, trembling.

“You've got nothing to be afraid of, dear,” he said, and then held open the gate, took her hand, and led her back to his own seat, next to her mother. He returned to the aisle, stood facing the crowd, and said nothing for a moment. Then he took off his sports jacket and laid it across the railing and meticulously rolled up both shirtsleeves, smiling at the crowd.

Orville was rapt. Schooner had positioned himself just where the argon rays from the streetlamp were highlighting his white hair and round face. His sleeves were rolled up casually, but his regimental striped tie was still knotted crisply around his thick neck. He looked cool, in both senses of that word. The crowd was still.
How does he do it?

“My fellow Columbians,” he began. “Our lovely little lady there, Amy Plotkin, has the right idea in her choice of words. Mercy.
Mercy.
” He paused and then said, once again, “Mercy. Justice and mercy.”

The Voice,
Orville thought. Husky. Mature. Sure.

“Let's show a little mercy to each other. It takes all kinds to make a world.”