Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) (14 page)

“Why
what?
” Mrs. Tarr asked, cupping her ear. “Whatwhatwhat?” She was a patient of his, and Orville knew just how hard of hearing she was.

“Why Worth?” he repeated more loudly, looking to Miranda for help.

“Why Worth
what?
” Miranda teased, again.

“Who was he and what did he do to deserve a hotel?”

Shyly, Miranda smiled. They were back into their conversation at the schoolhouse. Feeling even more attracted to him now, Miranda found it easy to move with him that way, even a relief. “William Jenkins Worth is born in 1794 on Coffin Street, a son of two original Nantucket Quakers. In 1812, at eighteen, he's working as a clerk at Gadicke's Feed and Grain, up on Eighth, measuring out barley and oats and doing a lot of heavy lifting. He's bored stiff. General Winfield Scott, with seven hundred soldiers in snappy uniforms and the latest guns all aglitter and lots of big healthy horses and fifes and drums, camps overnight right on Courthouse Square on his way north to fight the War of 1812.”

Amy and Orville asked, more or less together, “Which war was that?”

“Americans fighting the British and the Indians. Worth joins up, runs away from home. With General Apocalypse Smyth and General Scott, he's a hero at the Battle of Niagara, leads a massacre of the Indians at Chippewa, and becomes the Fourth Commandant of West Point. Restless, he runs off to massacre more Indians, this time in Florida in the Seminole War—Lake Worth, Florida, is named after him. All through the 1840s he's leading massacres, this time of Mexicans in the Mexican War.”

“Yech!” Amy said. “Killing Native Americans? What a jerk.”

“But jerks tend to rule, Amy dear,” said Mrs. Tarr.

“No joke! In school, the boys go down the halls in groups so you can't get by, shouting ‘Boys rule! Boys rule!' But we go, ‘Boys drool! Boys drool!'”

“Jolly good for you!” said Mrs. Tarr. “I wish we girls had such guts in my day, yes.”

“When I was little,” Amy went on, “we chanted back at them, ‘Girls go to college, to get more knowledge; boys go to Jupiter, to get more stupider.'”

“Which is,” Miranda went on, laughing, “probably true of General Worth. He's stupid, but he
looks great. He's said to be the most handsome man in the American army. Sitting on a horse he looks gorgeous, and he's a terrific dancer. The most popular dance of the day is the ‘General Worth Quickstep.'
America falls in love with him. And here in his hometown, they name this, the best hotel in Kinderhook County, after him. Famous people stay here—politicians, itinerant opera singers, titans of industry. Because of his talent for massacre and his gorgeousness on horseback and his dancing, he's a natural to run for president. But he has a . . .” she smiled mischievously, “a
fatal flaw.
He was one of the most stupidly arrogant, self-centered men in history, and it brought him down. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot? He tries to hog the limelight of the Mexican War by personally receiving the surrender, upstaging the same General Winfield Scott who'd lifted him up out of being a nothing here in Columbia. When chastised by Scott, he writes bitter, self-serving letters to newspapers, ripping his benefactor to shreds. The powers-that-be retaliate, stationing him out in the middle of nowhere to fortify the new border with Mexico. To honor him they name the first fort in Texas after him.”

“Fort Worth?” Amy asked. “I've been there with my parents. It's so uncool, like all yucky with golf courses. Milt plays there.”

“It's a thrilling story,” Orville said. “Columbia Boy Makes Good.”

“Not so good,” Miranda said. “He dies of cholera in San Antonio before he knows of the honor.”

“A great American,” Orville said cynically.

“In fact,” Miranda said, “he almost is.”

“Do they exist?”

“Try George Washington. Incredible man. After the Revolution he could have become a dictator, another Napoleon, but he gave the country back to the people. Steered us clear of becoming a banana republic.”

“So now we've got a regular republic,” he teased, “but with a banana in charge?”

Happily the group sipped hot chocolate and chatted bananas and Indians, whale jaws and Revolutions, while the howling wind rattled the huge old windows of the Federal-style house until Miranda had to leave to pick up Cray at soccer. And Amy and Orville would end their Sunday afternoon as usual at the Hudson Diner up at the Seventh Street Park with the lard-fried everythings of Orville's, and now Amy's, youth.

“And he's buried up there on Cemetery Hill?” Orville asked, as the group broke.

“Oh no!” Mrs. Tarr said, shocked. “That would be much too lowly for him. He's buried under an obelisk in Manhattan, Fifth and 25th, facing the Flatiron Building. All of his battles are carved on the obelisk. Chapultepec, Vera Cruz, Puebla, Lundy's Lane, Chippewa, Chorobusco—quite musical actually, are they not?”

All agreed that they were incredibly musical.

“And the historical irony, of course,” Miranda said, “is that no one notices he's there. It's a traffic island now, railed in, and there's not much free sidewalk. Even if you did notice, it's such a busy spot, noisy and frantic with traffic, few people stop. If you looked casually you'd think it was a relic stolen from some tomb in Egypt. Nobody reads what's on it. Poor Worth.”

As Mrs. Tarr flipped off the old light switches one by one, each with a sharp
clack,
Orville asked Miranda, “About the hotel, is there a chance you could win?”

“Almost certainly not. We've petitioned to have it put on the National Register of Historic Places, which delays things a little. To restore it would cost half a million. The people of Columbia want to tear it down. Most of our support comes from the people out in the county, but they don't have a vote. The feds have agreed to pay two-thirds of the demolition costs. We're waiting for the National Register to decide.”

“It could be the centerpiece of the resurrection of downtown,” said Mrs. Tarr. “The antiquers are with us, but they are few.”

“So what are your chances?” Orville asked.

“Uncle O.!” Amy cried out. “You mean what are
our
chances, right? You're with us, right?”

“Totally. What are our
chances.”

“Just about zero,” Miranda said. “Even if it's declared a historic site, if no one comes up with the money to restore it, the mayor can still knock it down. Plotkin and Schooner get to develop a brand-new history-making Price Slasher supermarket.”

“Those reekers! We've got to stop them.”

“So the bottom line is,” Miranda went on, “that it's just about hopeless, wouldn't you say, Mrs. Tarr?”

“Quite hopeless actually, yes.”

“Then why,” Orville asked, “are we doing this?”

Miranda felt a sense of relief. She was suddenly on familiar ground. It was as if he were asking her “Why try to walk?” or “Why try to mother?” or “Why try to avoid falling in love or avoid falling out?”

Given the dim prospects, Orville was surprised when, as she answered him, her voice was light and musical, as in that flirtatious moment of possibility in the dreary schoolhouse the week before.

“Why, Dr. Rose,” she said, touching his hand, looking him straight in the eye, “do we only do things for the results?”

· 10 ·

“Babs said this mornin' that since you're doin' such a fine job with the practice, and since it's gettin' cold, maybe her and me'll take a little vacation down in Boca. Now, I don't know, I mean what the hell is an old feller like me gonna do down in Boca Raton? Funny name, ain't it, Boca Raton?”

“Mouth of the Rat
,
” Orville said, comforted by the waft of scallions.

“That so? Even with Babs so nuts about animals, I doubt she has much affection for a rat, heh heh. Her idea is we do Thanksgiving down there with the other snowbirds. But then we come back for Christmas. We'd be gone just a couple, three weeks?”

“Uh-huh,” Orville said, leaning back in Bill's chair behind the old desk. Bill was sitting in the patient's chair and looked disoriented. “You want to change seats?”

“What's that? Nah. Feels kinda good bein' on this side. Say, Doc, I've had this problem in my groin for about ten, fifteen years, and—heh heh.” He blew out two plumes of smoke, coughed spasmodically, turned a little bluish, turned back to pinkish, and, pointing the Camel at Orville, went on. “I promised you you wouldn't have to carry the whole load, Orvy, so if you say no, then
I
can say no, and, hell, I'm happy.”

“The practice has been kind of slow, Bill. Three weeks is okay by me.”

“Shit. Kinda wish'd you hadn't of said that. I told Babs I can last two, maybe three weeks in Boca before my brain busts. We'd be back the first week in December?”

“Go for it, Bill.”

“I was afraid you'd say that.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Day after tomorrow. 'Course I been sayin' that for fifty-odd years, so we'll see.”

But he in fact had left on that tomorrow, and that was two weeks ago now, and since then the practice had turned sour.

Orville soon realized that Bill hadn't told him about deer hunting season—drunken hunters trying to bring into focus the twists and turns of the woodsy hog-backed roads out in the county, crashing into trees, cremating cars and humans. Unhappy hunters back home blasting away at family and friends. To Orville, it often seemed like Columbians were bagging more Columbians than deer. One day it would be a hunter bagging a propane tank of a house, exploding a family of six into the air. Another day a hunter bagging a schoolbus, showering the kids with glass—only one eye was lost but still. Housewives hanging up wash on the line getting a barrelful of buckshot. Several Columbians blasting off parts of their own bodies—a toe, a foot, a finger, a hand, an arm, a leg, a head—yes, even a head—leaving gaping wounds behind.

Exhausted by all this, Orville worked like crazy to find creative solutions, ways to take these remnants of the severings and eviscerations and amputations and gapings and, out of them, as the New York antiquers were always putting it,
make art
—that is, make not necessarily humans but bodies. Exhaustion and the intense focus on his work lengthened the intervals at which the loss of Celestina Polo tormented him. But for the enlivening carnage and the Sunday afternoons with Miranda and Amy, he was living in a blackout, carrying his exhaustion on his back like a curse, simmering with resentment. He became outspoken in his critique of hunters and hunting, and this stirred up a lot of anger among the Columbians. More and more he found himself arguing with his patients. Not good, he would say to himself, trying to cool off after another sharp exchange in the office or the hospital, definitely not good. I mean, doctors are supposed to be neutral, right?

Even during those precious few hours on Sunday, his one afternoon a week off, his bitterness moved in. He was mostly okay visiting historical sites with Amy and Miranda and even the tough Mrs. Tarr, but often he would encounter his patients. They would want to talk about their problem or someone else's or about his attitude toward deer hunting. Try as he might to listen patiently and respond courteously, he felt that he was failing, seeing himself at best as stiff and standoffish and at worst as oafish, even harsh. Bitter, yes. He worried what Miranda was making of all this.

As if the overwhelming workload weren't enough, Orville had gotten mugged. Early one morning a few weeks ago on a house call down below Fourth, he had been walking back to the Chrysler when a steel arm went around his neck from behind and his lights went out. He awoke in the hospital with Packy Scomparza the cop staring anxiously at him. His bag had been emptied of syringes and drugs. No suspects. Diagnosis: concussion. Orville thought he might have a chance to rest a little, but they yanked him out of bed that very morning and wheelchaired him down to emergency to tend to a 300-pound young man whose giant red-and-white checkerboard hunting jacket made him look like a billboard for Purina Dog Chow in a space warp. The kid was a hunter who had tracked a deer into a swamp and sunk in. He had to be sucked out by the Schwermann Well Driller. His core body temperature was 87. Despite efforts to fricassee him back up to liveable, he died.

The good thing about the mugging was the arrival on his doorstep of a single red rose and a postcard of the Worth in its former glory with the message: “Feel better! Affectionately, Miranda.”

Writing it, Miranda had hesitated how to sign it. Over the several Sundays that she had visited historical sites with Orville and Amy, she found herself liking him more and more. She kept looking for evidence in Orville of the kindness and compassion that Selma said he'd shown by staying with her. She thought that she had found it—not only in the way he acted toward his niece and her and Mrs. Tarr but in the way he was with the patients he often met. She watched him respond to their questions and complaints with frank care and concern, with patience and compassion, even as they took up precious time on his one afternoon off a week. He seemed a kind, generous, loving man who, like her, was always fighting a certain shyness. As she had seen this part of him, her affection had grown. She thought to sign the card “Love,” but at the moment her pen point touched the cardboard, her fear came back. It was the fear of his saying “temporarily,” of his being only temporarily there for her and for her son. The fear of again being left. And so the “L” became, with a little nudging and fudging, an “A.”

Orville ran the fingers of his mind over the five syllables of that “Affectionately,” a braille that brought back the music of her voice. “Affectionately”—it seemed like a lot. He kept the card in his pocket as he fought through the days and nights of butchery, replaying that music in his mind. It wasn't “Love,” but in the face of his growing rage at what he had gotten himself into, doctoring Columbians alone, it was a comfort.

Awaking the next Sunday morning after only two hours' sleep, Orville felt a bee sting of pain about Celestina, closely followed by a hit of rage at the latest letter from his mother, which had been awaiting him when he'd gotten home from the hospital at 3
A.M.
But then he settled into a glow of, yes, affection for Miranda, for what he saw as her groundedness, her living out a kind of historical accuracy, her
authenticity.
So unlike Celestina, with her fuzzy flights in the name of
karma
or
dharma
or whatever, with her secrets, her surprises, and her lies. Her betrayal—how meeting a rich banker had turned her “just two weeks more,
caro
” into forever.

The day dawned badly, an overnight mist sheening a first snow with ice. Driving and footing were treacherous. The night wind had been from the Universal Atlas Cement Plant, out past the storied hamlet of Katieville, so the town was covered with cement dust. Not only trees, houses, and cars but Columbians themselves, out shoveling or salting, were turned to dusty, ghostly shades. The cement dust mixed with the moisture in the air to coat the windshields of cars and trucks left out overnight with a thin sheet of cement. Water wouldn't touch it. The only way to remove it was to dissolve it with vinegar. This left the whole town smelling vaguely like a green salad gone bad.

As Orvy worked his windshield with vinegar, he watched the procession of dust-colored Columbians snaking their way across the icy, slippery Courthouse Square toward mass at St. Mary's. He pictured their pulmonary alveoli—imagine what this cement shit is doing to all of our lungs.

That Sunday's historical site was the Quaker Meeting House, down Coffin from the Square. For the first time in their several Sundays, Amy would not be with them. She had a rehearsal for the Christmas opening of
The Greenie Sellers Midsummer Night's Dream.
After that first day at the Worth, Amy had gotten fanatical about saving the hotel. Just last week
The
Columbia Crier
published a front-page photo of Amy and Miranda and Mrs. Tarr picketing on the future site of Milt and Schooner's dream development.

Milt had gone ballistic, Penny all acid. Amy refused to talk to them. They asked Orvy to dinner to give some advice. While Penny and he sat at the table, Milt had taken Amy aside, down into the sunken living room. Orville and Penny watched Milt, on the verge of an explosion, patiently explaining the situation to his daughter. His hands traced logical fiscal scenarios of healthy urban development in the air of the all-beige
kiva
.
Finally he sat back, inviting his daughter's response.

“You've got bad breath,” Amy said, and stormed up, and out, to her room.

Milt blew. “No horses or drama-shit with that faggoty dwarf Sellers
forever!
”

“How can you date
her?
” Penny shouted at Orville, over Milt's raving.

“I'm not dating her, I'm just walking with her at—”

“Take it from Milt and me, she's a character!”

“What's wrong with that for Chrissakes?”

“Character stands in the way of progress!” Milt shouted. He seemed surprised at having said this and more calmly added, “And so forth.”

“Just what this world needs, eh, Milt? Another Price Slasher?”

“Yes.”

“Well, good luck, Milt. I hope you make a mint.”

“As they say in Yiddish, Orvy:
From your lips to God's ear.
”

Now, outside the Quaker Meeting House, Orville offered his arm to Miranda as she got out of her car. The curb and walk were icy. For him, the feel of her leaning on him brought back the times that his mother, dizzy from her as-yet-undiagnosed brain tumor, would suddenly lurch into him, holding on for dear life. For a boy, a shock.

Miranda, leaning on so many arms in her lifetime, could read a lot in the Samaritan's touch. Now she picked up Orville's struggle, thinking of Selma telling her how her son had helped her to balance. But Miranda had a lot else on her mind. In the weeks since Cray's “Plez See My Hart” note, sometimes he had in fact allowed her to do that, but mostly not. He seemed to have gotten argumentative, a little lawyer. Her other friends who were mothers told her that it was typical for a six-year-old, this lawerly arguing his way out of even her smallest request. But she found it hellish. Her historian's mind labeled them “The Cray Wars: The Daily War of the Wakeup for School” or “The Great War of the Turning Off of the TV” or “The Eat Your Apple War” or “The Seasonal War of the Wearing of Your Winter Coat.” She wondered if Cray sensed that something new was up with her on Sunday afternoons. Usually she had stayed at his soccer games to watch, but the last several Sundays she hadn't. Miranda had not told him why. Given her penchant for secrets, and her unwillingness to risk involving her son in this temporary little history with Orville, she felt it was better to hide it.

Separately and privately, Miranda and Orville shared an excitement about seeing each other again this Sunday. But when they actually did meet at the curb, shyness dusted them, graying them both. Alone together for the first time since the meeting in the schoolhouse, without Mrs. Tarr or Amy as their human vinegars, each saw the other with that pale cast of their own inner worry.

Bravely, they each tried hard to go against their natures. They said to themselves things like, “When you say hello, look into his eyes,” or “Make a casual remark about how she looks or what she's wearing.” But it was awkward. In just a few careful steps across the icy sidewalk small talk became big silence. Each of their minds filled with variants of “What the hell was I thinking of, saying yes to this?” or “Okay I'll just try to make it through this final Sunday politely and that's it.” Wordlessly they went into the Meeting House.

The Meeting House was a tiny single room. Two windows next to the door were mirrored across the room by two looking out into Prison Alley. Old, worn, varnished benches formed a square around nothing. The benches were covered with dark blue cushions. A child's small plastic tricycle was parked in a corner. Few Quakers were left in Columbia. Five sat there around the square, as if around a boxing ring with the fights long banned. They were sitting in silence. Miranda and Orville joined them.