The Seduction of Water (11 page)

“Maybe we’ll at least see some royalty checks,” my aunt had replied. And, in fact, the royalties from that edition paid for my college and first year of graduate school.

“You see, your little essay inspired me to look up your mother’s work. I’m afraid I’d never read them.” He shakes his head and looks genuinely regretful. “I’m not usually a fan of science fiction—or do you call this fantasy?—but I found your mother’s books an exception. It’s quite fascinating how she’s taken these Old World legends and turned them into a fantasy world. These selkie creatures, for instance, who are searching for a lost necklace—where do you think she got that from?”

“Well, the selkies are from an Irish folktale, but I’ve never been able to find a version of the story that involves a necklace. Of course the search for a lost piece of jewelry is a common archetypal quest motif—like the ring in Tolkien or the Grail in Arthurian legends . . .” I notice that Harry Kron’s eyes are glazing over as most people’s do when I start in with words like
archetypal
and
motif
. “Anyway, I’ve never been able to figure out the significance of the necklace—the net of tears, as it’s called. It’s supposed to be a gift from a mother to her daughter, but then it’s stolen by the evil king Connachar, and recovered by the hero Naoise in Book Two.”

“Shouldn’t that be the end of the story?”

“Unfortunately for Naoise—but fortunately for readers who like a sequel—the necklace brings nothing but trouble for him. By the end of Book Two, the selkie Deirdre knows she must find the necklace and destroy it. Presumably that’s what she’ll do in Book Three and that’s when we’d learn the significance of the necklace.”

“And what makes you think there is a third book?”

I tell him what Hedda Wolfe said. He looks out the window as I talk, more engrossed, I think, by the red cliffs of the Palisades and the hard blue glitter of the Hudson than by what I’m saying.

“So my plan is to spend the summer up at the hotel looking for the book and talking to people who remember my mother.”

“Are there many left?” he asks, stirring from his drowsy contemplation of the river. The rhythm of the train and the glare off the water have made me sleepy as well and I have to stifle a yawn while I answer him. “Oh, my aunt and the gardener, Joseph, and Janine, the telephone operator. Some of the regular guests maybe—but that will depend on how many come this summer.” I explain, then, about the hotel’s financial troubles and he perks up a bit. This is more up his alley than obscure mythological fantasy creatures. We talk about hotels for a bit and he becomes more and more animated, telling me about his favorite hotels in Europe, the Villa d’Este on Lake Como, the Hotel Hassler in Rome (“The first hotel I worked in after the war was in Rome, where I’d studied art before the war,” he tells me), the Ritz in London, the Hotel Charlotte in Nice. Many of the names are familiar to me from my father’s reminiscences of Europe after the war and I tell him which ones my father loved.

“I think the Hotel Charlotte is where he met Joseph, our gardener,” I conclude. “He said it was how he got the idea of running a hotel, the time he spent in Europe at the end of the war.”

“Ah yes,” Harry Kron says, his eyes lighting up, completely awake now. “For many of us the war opened our eyes to a whole new world. That might sound like a paradox—that good could come out of so much horror and destruction—but it’s true, or at least it was for me. It wasn’t for my brother Peter, Phoebe’s father; he spent a year in the Udine POW camp in northern Italy and then, after Mussolini died, he escaped and hid at a villa near Ferrara that belonged to an old friend of our family.”

I’m remembering what Phoebe said about her father, how she painted him as the villain in her parents’ marriage. “Was he very traumatized by his experience in the camp?”

“He would never say very much of it; he preferred to regale us with stories of the Countess Oriana’s wine cellars in which he hid for several months and hairbreadth escapes on Alpine passes. He treated it like a romantic adventure. I suppose ordinary civilian life seemed dull to him after the war; he was never able to settle down to anything, whereas the war pointed me toward my future. I had the great opportunity to serve as a Monuments officer.”

“What’s that?”

“We were in charge of protecting works of art and monuments of national artistic significance. I was recruited out of Cambridge because of the time I’d spent in Italy. I was instrumental in recovering a trove of Florentine treasures that had been removed from the Uffizi by the Nazis.”

“That must have been gratifying.”

“Most gratifying. I became friendly with a number of Americans and I decided that after the war I’d bring European culture back to America. You Americans discovered Europe after the war. Tastes in food, wine, and art were transformed. So many new possibilities. That’s what I saw when I came to New York . . . it’s not just that there was money all of a sudden, but what people were willing to spend it on . . . good food, wine, elegant hotels like the great hotels in Europe.”

“So you bought your first hotel—the Crown Hotel in New York?”

“Yes,” he smiles at me for remembering. “And your father too went into the hotel business.”

I nod. Of course my father didn’t have the money to buy a hotel. Nor do I think he quite shared Harry Kron’s entrepreneurial vision. He saw life in a hotel more as a refuge, I think, a corner of peace after what he had seen in the war.

“The country was reinventing itself,” Harry is saying. “And I thought, what better way than with travel and hotels. There is, in a beautiful hotel, the possibility of inventing oneself anew.”

“Yes, my father said that too. He said vacations gave people the opportunity to be their best selves and that’s what a good hotel should bring out in people: their best selves.”

Harry Kron smiles. “I would have liked to meet your father.”

I nod, too close to tears suddenly to speak, and we both look out the window at the bright blue ribbon of river, our constant traveling companion. I realize from the terrain that we’re nearing my stop and then the conductor calls the name of the prison, which is also the name of the town.

“Well,” I say, slinging the strap of my book bag over my shoulder, “the trip has never gone so fast for me. I really enjoyed your company.”

“And I yours.”

“Please don’t get up,” I say when I see him preparing to.

He gets up anyway and opens the corridor door leading to the platform between cars and stands with me there while the train comes into the station. The outside door is open and I can see the rails flashing under us like the spokes of a wheel, blurring one into another. It makes me dizzy for a moment and Harry Kron puts his hand over mine on the handrail I’m grasping to steady me. I realize he must be a little unsteady himself because he grips my hand so hard I have to bite my lip not to call out. When the train finally stops I have to wrench my hand out from under his.

“Well good-bye,” I say, walking down the iron steps. I turn when I’m on the platform. “Have a good trip . . .” I start to say, but the space between the cars is empty and I suddenly realize I never even asked where he was going.

Chapter Eleven

My class at Rip Van Winkle is three hours long. There’s not much point to giving breaks because none of us can go anyplace and so the session usually seems interminable. Today, though, they’re writing their final essays. I manage to finish grading all their previous assignments by the time they finish writing. I can’t dismiss them early—or let them go one at a time—so we’re stuck making small talk until the officer comes to escort us back across the courtyard. We talk about the movie version of
Othello
that I showed them last class—the one with Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Fishburne. It had been a challenge to get them through Shakespeare and I’d thought the movie would help. It had. They’d liked the crafty Iago, the sword fights, Laurence Fishburne’s regal bearing. What had unnerved me was that when Othello killed Desdemona they had cheered.

“The bitch got what she deserved,” one of my students informs me today.

“But she didn’t do anything—she wasn’t unfaithful,” I try to explain.

My point falls on deaf ears. Desdemona’s innocence seems beside the point. Maybe because they’re used to such claims.
I’m innocent, I didn’t do it
doesn’t carry a whole lot of weight around here. Even Emilio Lara shrugs as if he agreed with Desdemona’s fate but is too much of a gentleman to say so. By the time the officer comes I feel dispirited and depressed. I realize as I’m checking out at the front gate that if I could grade their final exams and average their grades right now I wouldn’t have to come back here next week. Maybe it’s Harry Kron’s comments that have gotten to me—wasting my talent on illiterate criminals—or the discussion on Othello. Or maybe it’s that Aidan’s no longer in the class. I’m suddenly desperate to be through with this prison.

I go to a coffee shop on Main Street and over a Greek omelet and several cups of coffee read my students’ finals, average their grades, and bubble in their grade reports. By the time I turn in the grades and walk back down to the station the sun is already beginning to approach the mountains on the other side of the river. I’ve spent the whole day here, but at least I feel a sense of completion—a rare thing for me.

I’ve got half an hour before the next southbound train so I walk to the north end of the platform and lean on the chain-link fence separating the train yard from the river. The river is wide here, a fjord really, which, when I once looked it up, I found meant that it was a river that had been drowned by the sea—just like the river in my mother’s books.
In a time before the rivers were drowned by the sea . . .
she would start her story each night. Which I suppose is just another way of saying once upon a time.

As the sun sinks toward the Catskills on the west bank the river turns a cold slaty blue—tinted, I imagine, by an infusion of Atlantic water sweeping up from the sea. The low mountains on the other side fold the light into jeweled bands: emerald, sapphire, pearl, and amethyst. It’s hard to tell where the mountains end and the clouds, purpling as the sun sets, begin. It’s as if the mountains were pulling the water-dense swaths of pink and violet clouds to them, like a woman drawing a cloak over her shoulders. No wonder the early Dutch settlers thought the mountains were the home of storm gods and ghosts. It looks as if they are drawing a storm down right now. I close my eyes to feel the last warmth of the sun before the rain reaches down here. I’ve still got my eyes closed when I feel a hand touch my shoulder.

I turn around to find Aidan Barry, shading his eyes from the sun, squinting at me.

“Professor Greenfeder? I thought that was you.”

“God, Aidan, don’t creep up on me like that. Especially so close to the train tracks.” It’s an absurd comment—we’re a good eight feet from the edge of the platform, but I’m trying to cover my embarrassment with teacherly admonishment. Lately I’ve found with Aidan that I have to keep reminding myself that I am his teacher and that I’m a good seven years older than he is.

“Och, I wouldn’t let you fall on the tracks like poor Anna Karenina. At least not till I get the letter of recommendation I’m after asking you for.” Aidan winks at me to accompany his suddenly exaggerated brogue—or maybe it’s just the sun in his eyes. I turn to walk back down the platform so he won’t have to look into the sun to talk to me (not, I tell myself, because I’m nervous being alone with him at this deserted end of the platform) and he falls into step beside me.

“What letter is that?”

“My parole officer just now—” He jerks his chin in the general direction of the prison. “—says I should get a letter from one of my teachers saying what a good citizen I’ve become, a reformed man, you know. I thought you could write it for me. None of my other teachers has so much as bothered to learn my name.”

“Oh, I bet that isn’t true.” I can’t imagine having Aidan in a class and not knowing exactly who he is. Sneaking a sideways look at him I notice that since he’s gotten out of prison he’s filled out a bit and gotten some color in that pale skin of his. He’s let his hair grow and it curls just a bit over his ears and at the nape of his neck.

“I’m happy to write you a letter, Aidan; you’ve been a fine student. If there’s anything else I can do . . .”

“Well, there is one thing . . . but let me tell you on the train.” He cocks his thumb over his shoulder and I look behind him. Far down the tracks, barely visible, I make out the silver glint of the southbound train.

“How’d you know the train was here?”

Aidan grins and rocks back on his heels. “Old Indian trick. The tracks run right through Van Wink. I got used to feeling the vibrations before it came. I guess that’s something you don’t forget.” That momentary glint of pride fades, replaced by something else, sadness or shame, or some mixture of the two. I try not to think of what else he’s learned in prison and wonder if he’ll always live under that shadow.

We board the train and find two seats next to each other. He takes the window seat, which means I can look at him and still see the river. I can’t help but compare the southbound trip with the northbound. The sunlit trip north, the gathering clouds heading south. My two gentleman admirers! One old enough to be my father, the other young enough to be . . . what? A younger brother, I suppose . . .

I’m so caught up figuring out what our age difference adds up to that I miss something Aidan is asking me.

“. . . so do you think there’s any chance you could look into it for me, I mean, I know, no one wants to hire an ex-con.” That look of shame passes over his clear blue-green eyes, like the rain shadow I watched pass over the mountains before, and it pains me to see it.

“I would personally vouch for you to any potential employer,” I say, gratified to see that shadow lift from his eyes. We’ve reached the outskirts of the city, the Bronx a dark silhouette against a moist purple sky. The heavy clouds I saw massing over the Catskills have followed us south. I see the lights of the skyline over Aidan’s shoulder and then a curtain of rain extinguishes them.

“Brilliant,” Aidan says, flashing me a smile so expansive I feel something let go inside my chest just as the clouds have released their rain. “I know hotel work’s the line for me. You won’t be sorry.”

I am sorry, though, for the rest of the train ride but I can’t think of any way to explain to Aidan that I misheard him—that I wasn’t paying attention because I’d been too busy rationalizing a relationship I don’t plan to have. He, innocently unaware of my remorse, is filling me in on his varieties of hotel experiences. He comes from a long line of hotel workers, he tells me. Even back in Ireland, the men in his family would go over to London to work in the big hotels—the Connaught, the Savoy, the Ritz, the May Fair—and send money back home. “That’s how my mom met my dad—she was working as a maid and he was the night clerk. They came over here because they had a cousin who’d promised them work in a New York hotel, but by the time they got over the hotel had closed down. That’s when my dad started drinking—like he’d decided the world had no good in store for him anymore. Anyway, I’ve always felt the business was in my blood. You understand, coming from a hotel family yourself.”

I could explain that I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid working at the hotel. It would be a good preamble to telling him I can’t really get him a job at the Hotel Equinox—but knowing, as I do, that I’m planning to ask my aunt for a job myself, I can’t. As the train pulls into the station I tell myself that in a few days I’ll just tell Aidan that I asked my aunt Sophie for a place for him at the hotel and that there wasn’t one. I shoulder my book bag and button up my raincoat with that resolve in mind. We both walk briskly up the platform toward the main terminal, both of us resuming a city pace until we hit a wave of commuters heading down to the trains, the great tide flooding back out of the city. Aidan takes my arm and steers me though the crowd. The vaulted space above us is dark now, the lightbulbs in the constellations twinkling a little brighter in the gloom.

Would it really hurt, I wonder, just to ask? Chances are there won’t be a job for me, or Mrs. Rivera, let alone Aidan. The hotel might not be open this summer. I’ll ask and then I can tell Aidan the truth and it’ll just be one more disappointment to him, but it won’t be my fault.

I feel better, then, turning to say good-bye to him at the Vanderbilt exit. I tell him I’m going to take a bus home because of the rain. But instead of shaking the hand I hold out to him he holds both his hands up, wrists bent, palms up, so that he looks like some ancient figure representing justice or balance. It’s a full thirty seconds before I get the purpose of his pantomime. It’s not raining. The thundershower that rolled off the western mountains and bowled its way down the alley of the Hudson was an isolated salvo. The rain has glazed the streets, freshened the air, and moved on.

“It’s a beautiful night,” he says, “let me walk you home.”

And since I can’t dispute the truth of the first part of his statement, I see no reason not to assent to the second part.

We walk west on 42nd Street and cut across Bryant Park just because the trees are so beautiful there. The leaves are still that new spring green, not full enough yet to hide the elegant bone structure of their limbs. The street lamps make spiderwebs out of the slick wet branches. Aidan tells me more about his family, about growing up in Inwood and how even though his dad wasn’t much on the scene he’d had his grandmother, aunts and uncles, and scores of cousins to take up the slack.

We weave through the streets of the garment district and end up on Ninth Avenue and 38th Street, the southern edge of Hell’s Kitchen.

“Does your family still live in Inwood?” I ask Aidan as we turn south on Ninth.

“My mother’s still there—my dad died a couple of years ago. Most of my cousins live in Woodlawn.”

“That’s nice you’re so close to your family,” I say.

Aidan makes a face. “Oh, it’s a bit clannish for me. That’s how you find work, though, by staying in touch with all the boys, only . . .”

Aidan pauses and I can tell, looking over at him as we pass under a street lamp, that he’s not so much at a loss for words as trying to edit something out for my benefit. I wonder what it could be.

“Only sometimes the work’s not to my liking.”

Aidan looks over at me and I nod. In other words, sometimes the work’s not legal. That’s what he’s trying to tell me. That if I don’t find him work at the hotel he’ll end up in the same old crowd. I remember what he said in his paper, about watching the ex-cons fall back in with their old ways because no one was willing to take a chance on them and give them a fresh start. Unless there was someone like the girl in the fairy tale who held on even when the boy she embraced turned into a snake, and then a lion, and then a pillar of flames.

Was it too much to ask to look beyond what he appeared to be now, to what he could become if only someone gave him a chance?

Although I assure Aidan that I don’t need him to walk me all the way home he says he’s glad to. That he’s enjoying the air and the company. When we pass a bar in Chelsea, though, I see his eyes flick sideways and the young men standing around outside smoking cigarettes call his name.

“Friends of yours?” I ask as we approach the bar—which, I notice, is called the Red Branch.

“Aye, like I said, I know half the Irish population on the isle of Manhattan.”

“Well, don’t let me stop you if you want to go in. I’m more than halfway home.”

Aidan smiles, I think because I’ve released him, but then he puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close enough so he can whisper in my ear.

“Would you mind coming in for a drink?” he asks. “It’ll mean a lot to these lads that I’m seen with such a classy lady.”

I can’t help smiling at that any more than I can help that flutter I feel in my chest every time Aidan looks at me. It’s not a night Jack comes over, so why not? Haven’t I earned a little time off after all the grading I’ve done today? The pub looks bright and inviting, not one those derelict Irish bars near the train station. I can see through the door a mix of young and old people and I can hear live music wafting out onto Ninth Avenue. There are tables with candles flickering in stained-glass holders and a beautiful stained-glass window set into the fanlight above the door, which depicts three men struggling through a raging sea, a woman in a red cloak perched on the shoulders of one of the men.

“You see that window?” I ask Aidan, buying myself time while I decide if I should take him up on his offer or not. “It’s from a story called ‘The Sorrows of Deirdre.’ Have you ever heard of it?”

“Wasn’t it Deirdre who got her husband and his two brothers slaughtered?” Aidan asks, looking up at the window. “I always wondered why it was called ‘The Sorrows of Deirdre’ when it was she who caused all the sorrows.”

“Just like a man,” I say. “Always blaming the woman. It wasn’t her fault that Naoise fell in love with her.”

“Naoise?” It’s one of those names that sounds—
NEE-sheh
—nothing like it’s spelled, but Aidan pronounces the name just as my mother did.

“That’s the fellow whose shoulders she’s on. He falls in love with her and they run away, along with his brothers Allen and Arden, because she was supposed to marry the king, Connachar Mac Ness. They all live happily in Scotland for a while, but then they’re tricked into coming back and Mac Ness tries to take Deirdre back. When they try to escape again, Connachar orders his druid to conjure up an ocean to stop them. That’s them trying to get across it.”