Rules of Civility (41 page)

—Drat, Dicky said, with enthusiasm.

He turned to me with a touch of paternal concern.

—Don't be discouraged.

—Discouraged?

I stood up and smooched him on the smacker. When I pulled back, he smiled and said:

—Back to work!

 

Dicky didn't have one paper airplane—he had fifty. There were triple folds, quadruple folds, quintuple folds, some of which were doubled back and reversed in quick succession, creating wing shapes that one wouldn't have thought possible without tearing the paper in two. There were those with a truncated wing and a needle nose, others with condors' wings and narrow submarine-like bodies ballasted with paper clips.

As we sent the requests across Eighty-third Street, I began to slowly understand that Dicky's proficiency lay not simply in the engineering of the planes, but in his launching techniques too. Depending on the plane's structure he would use more or less force, more or less incline, showing the expertise of one who has launched a thousand solo flights across a thousand Eighty-third streets in a thousand weather conditions.

By ten o'clock, the ponderous party had come to an end; the young revolutionaries had fallen asleep with the lights on; and we had landed, unbeknownst to our fat pianist (who had waddled off to brush his teeth), four musical requests on the tiles of his terrace. With the last plane launched, we too decided to pack it in. But when Dicky bent over to pick up the sandwich platter, he found one last piece of stationery. He stood up and looked out over the balcony.

—Wait, he said.

He leaned over and wrote out a message in perfect cursive. Without relying on his tools, he folded it back and forth until he had one of his sharper models. Then he carefully aimed and sailed it out over the street toward the nursery on the eighteenth floor of No. 44. As it traveled it seemed to gather momentum. The lights of the city flickered as if they were supporting it, the way that phosphorescence seems to support a nocturnal swimmer. It went right through their window and landed silently atop a barricade.

Dicky hadn't shown me the note, but I had read it over his shoulder.

And, ever so appropriately, he had signed it
Peter Pan.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Now You See It

The first wind of the New York winter was sharp and heartless. Whenever it blew, it always made my father a little nostalgic for Russia. He'd break out the samovar and boil black tea and recall some December when there was a lull in conscription and the well wasn't frozen and the harvest hadn't failed. It wouldn't be such a bad place to be born, he'd say, if you never had to live there.

My window overlooking the back court was so crooked you could stick a pencil through the gap where the frame was supposed to meet the sill. I caulked it with an old pair of underpants, set the kettle on the stove, and recalled a few sorry Decembers of my own. I was spared the reminiscing by a knock on the door.

It was Anne, dressed in gray slacks and a baby blue shirt.

—Hello, Katherine.

—Hello, Mrs. Grandyn.

She smiled.

—I suppose I deserve that.

—To what do I owe the pleasure on a Sunday afternoon?

—Well, I hate to admit it—but at any given moment, we're all seeking
someone's
forgiveness. And at this particular point, I think I may be seeking yours. I put you in the position of playing the fool, which no woman like me should do to a woman like you.

That's how good she was.

—May I come in?

—Sure, I said.

And why not? When all was said and done, I knew I couldn't bear much of a grudge against Anne. She hadn't abused a trust of mine; nor had she particularly compromised herself. Like any Manhattanite of means, she had identified a need and paid to have it serviced. In its own perverse way, her purchase of a young man's favors was perfectly in keeping with the unapologetic self-possession that made her so impressive. Still, it would have been nice to see her a little more off her axis.

—Would you like a drink? I asked.

—I learned my lesson the last time. But is that tea you're brewing? That might hit the spot.

As I readied the pot she looked around my apartment. She wasn't taking an inventory of my belongings as Bryce had. She seemed more interested in the architectural features: the warped floor, cracked moldings, exposed pipes.

—When I was a girl, she said, I lived in an apartment a lot like this one, not too far from here.

I couldn't hide my surprise.

—Does that shock you?

—I'm not exactly shocked, but I assumed you were born rich.

—Oh. I was. I was raised in a townhouse off Central Park. But when I was six, I lived with a nanny on the Lower East Side. My parents told me some nonsense about my father being sick, but their marriage was probably on the verge of collapse. I gather he was something of a philanderer.

I raised my eyebrows. She smiled.

—Yes, I know. The apple and the tree. What my mother wouldn't have given to have me take after
her
side of the family.

We were both quiet for a moment, providing a natural opportunity for her to change the subject. But she went on. Maybe the first winds of winter make everyone a little nostalgic for the days they're lucky to be rid of.

—I remember the morning my mother brought me downtown. I was dropped in a carriage with a trunkful of clothes—half of which wouldn't do me any good where I was headed. When we got to Fourteenth Street it was crowded with hawkers and saloons and trade wagons. Seeing how excited I was by all the commotion, my mother promised I would be crossing Fourteenth Street every week on my way to visit her. I didn't cross it again for a year.

Anne raised her cup of tea to drink, but paused.

—Come to think of it, she said, I haven't crossed it since.

She started laughing.

And after a moment, I joined in. For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense.

—Actually, she continued, crossing Fourteenth Street isn't the only thing I've revisited from my youth because of you.

—What's the other?

—Dickens. Remember that day in June when you were spying on me at the Plaza? You had one of his novels in your bag and it triggered some fond memories. So I dug up an old copy of
Great Expectations
. I hadn't opened the book in thirty years. I read it cover to cover in three days.

—What did you think?

—It was great fun, of course. The characters, the language, the turns of events. But I must admit that this time around, the book struck me as a little like Miss Havesham's dining room: a festive chamber which has been sealed off from time. It's as if Dickens's world was left at the altar.

And so it went. Anne waxed poetically on her preference for the modern novel—for Hemingway and Woolf—and we had two cups of tea, and before she had overstayed her welcome, she rose to go. At my threshold, she took one last look around.

—You know, she said as if the thought had just occurred to her, my apartment at the Beresford is going to waste. Why don't you take it?

—Oh, I couldn't, Anne.

—Why not? Woolf was only half right when she wrote
A Room of One's Own
. There are rooms, and there are rooms. Let me lend it to you for a year. It'll be my way of settling the score.

—Thanks, Anne. But I'm happy where I am.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a key.

—Here.

Ever tasteful, the key was on a silver ring with a leather fob the color of summer skin. She put it on a stack of books just inside my door. Then she held up her hand to stay any protest.

—Just think about it. One day during lunch give it a walk-through. Try it on for size.

I swept up the key in my palm and followed her into the hall.

I had to laugh at the whole thing. Anne Grandyn was as sharp as a harpoon and twice as barbed: An apology followed by childhood memories of the Lower East Side; a tip of the hat to her philandering roots; I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd read the whole works of Dickens just to frost this little éclair.

—You're something else, Anne, I said with a lilt.

She turned back to face me. Her expression was more serious.

—You're the one who's something else, Katherine. Ninety-nine of a hundred women born in your place would be up to their elbows in a washtub by now. I doubt you have the slightest idea of just how unusual you are.

Whatever I'd thought Anne was up to, I wasn't ready for compliments. I found myself looking at the floor. As I looked up again, through the opening in her blouse I could see that the skin of her sternum was pale and smooth; and that she wasn't wearing a bra. I didn't have time to brace myself. When I met her gaze she kissed me. We were both wearing lipstick, so there was an unusual sensation of friction as the waxy surfaces met. She put her right arm around me and pulled me closer. Then she slowly stepped back.

—Come spy on me again sometime, she said.

As she turned to go, I reached for her elbow. I turned her back around and pulled her closer. In many ways, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever known. We were almost nose to nose. She parted her lips. I slipped my hand down her pants and deposited the key.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Thy Kingdom Come

It was the second Saturday in December and I was in a six-story walk-up across the East River surrounded by strangers.

The afternoon before, I had run into Fran in the Village and she was full of news. She had finally checked out of Mrs. Martingale's and moved in with Grubb. It was a railroad apartment off Flatbush and from the fire escape you could practically see the Brooklyn Bridge. She had a bag in her arms overflowing with fresh mozzarella and olives and canned tomatoes and other Mott Street fare—because it was Grubb's birthday and she was going to make him Veal Pacelli. She'd even bought a hammer like her nana used to use, so she could pound the cutlets herself. Then tomorrow night they were having a party and I had to promise to come.

She was wearing jeans and a tight-fitting sweater, standing about ten feet tall. A new apartment with Grubb and a scaloppine mallet . . .

—You're on top of the world, I said, and I meant it.

She just laughed and slugged me in the shoulder.

—Cut the crap, Katey.

—I'm serious.

—Sort of, she said with a smile.

Then she got all concerned like she'd offended me.

—Hey. Don't get me wrong. Nicer words were never said. But that doesn't mean they aint crapola! I'm on the top of something, I guess, but it aint the world. We're gonna get hitched and Grubb's gonna paint and I'm gonna give him five kids and sagging tits. And I can't wait! But the top of the world? That's more in your line of work—And I'm counting on you getting there.

 

The crowd was a mulligan stew of their friends and acquaintances. There were gum-smacking girls from the Catholic stretches of the Jersey shore mixed in among a sampling of Astoria's poets-by-day-watchmen-by-night. There were two big-armed boys from Pacelli Trucking who'd been thrown to the mercy of an up-and-coming Emma Goldman. Everyone was wearing pants. They were crowded in elbow to elbow and ethos to ethos, shrouded in a haze of cigarette smoke. The windows were open and you could see that some of the savvier attendees had spilled onto the fire escape to breathe the late autumn air and take in the almost view of the bridge. That's where our hostess had perched herself. She was seated precariously on the fire escape's railing wearing a beret and a low-hanging cigarette in the manner of Bonnie Parker.

A late arrival from Jersey who came in behind me stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the living room wall. Hung on it from floor to ceiling was a series of Hopperesque portraits of bare-chested coat-check girls. The girls were sitting behind their counters looking aimless and bored but somehow confrontational—as if daring us to be just as aimless and bored as they. Some had their hair pulled back and others had it tucked under a cap, but all were versions of Peaches—right down to her eggplant-colored silver-dollar aureoles. I think the latecomer actually gasped. The fact that her high school chum had posed bare-chested filled her with fear and envy. You could just tell that she had made up her mind to move to New York City the next day; or never.

In the center of the wall, surrounded by Grubb's coat-check girls, hung a painting of a theater marquee on Broadway: a Hank Grey original, with apologies to Stuart Davis. He's probably here, I thought, and I found myself hoping to see his misanthropic silhouette. He was basically a porcupine, but with a sentimental stripe and quills that made you think. Maybe Tinker had been right, after all. Maybe Hank and I
had
hit it off.

True to the working-class tone of the gathering, the only alcohol in attendance appeared to be beer—but all I could find were empty bottles. Collecting at the feet of the partygoers, they would occasionally get knocked over like ten pins and rattle across the hardwood floor. Then, coming down the crowded hallway from the kitchen, I spied a blonde holding a newly opened bottle in the air like the Statue of Liberty holds its torch.

The kitchen was decidedly less gregarious than the living room. In the middle was a raised tub where a professor and a schoolgirl sat knee to knee sniggering over personal business. I made my way to the icebox, which was along the back wall. Its door was blocked by a tall, blue-chinned bohemian. With his pointed nose and vaguely proprietary air, he recalled the half man half jackals that guarded the tombs of the pharaohs.