The Rags of Time (6 page)

Columbus Circle, newly refurbished with trees that brave the exhaust fumes, stands at the southwest corner of Central Park. The Admiral wears the familiar cloak of his best days, fur trim and rich wool stiffly flowing. The puffy beret we remember from a school play. Perched on a mighty pillar, he stands sentinel to the traffic that circles round him, his back to the Park and to the outsize pylon that bears the competing statue of Columbia Triumphant as she heads toward Broadway in a golden shell. Layer upon layer of gold leaf covers her body and windblown gown. She commemorates our Victory in the Spanish-American War, 1898. Columbia and Columbus join in our urban allegory of Empire as empire sails on.

October 13, 1492.
The fish so unlike ours that it is wonderful. Some are the shape of dories and of the finest colors, so bright that there is not a man who would not be astounded, and would not take great delight in seeing them. There are also whales. I saw no beasts on land save parrots and lizards.

Among trees. On the Mall in Central Park, he stands under American elms with the poets. Blinded by disgrace, the Admiral could not see Literary Walk flashing green to gold on the day marking the discovery, nor hear the distant blare of a high-school band, so I backdate him to full possession of his
Privileges,
walk him along Columbus Avenue a block west of Central Park. In the neighborhood of the El Dorado, two restaurants are Italian with inferior
trenette al pesto, pandolce
of sorts. The Mass at St. Gregory’s on 90th Street is said in Spanish and French,
Salve,
a poor parish of immigrants—Hispaniola, San Salvador, Port-au-Prince—its school basement once the last refuge of unruly priests who protested the Vietnam War. That war, this war. Many of the indigenous on the avenue are dusky as those once noted in his log. On this unnaturally warm day, a few men and women display markings of mysterious designs on their naked arms and legs. We might stop at the narrow shop with birds in the window—zebra finches, parrots, canaries, the exotic creatures he captured for the delight and edification of Her Majesty. Past the flower shop with Peruvian lilies, maranta, Queen’s tears, a bouquet gathered from his
Discoveries.
We will stop at 86th Street. Two banks on the corner. That should amaze the Genoese sailor. His swollen fingers fumble with the knot on his purse. The high ceiling and terrazzo, all so familiar, but the deposit slot rejects his
pesos d’oro
. . . .
And that henceforth I should be called Don, and should be Chief Admiral of the Ocean Seas, and that my eldest son should succeed and so from generation to generation forever. . . .

The woolen cloak heavy on his stooped shoulders, strands of white hair poke out of the jaunty tam. Through infirmity of eyes, he sees at last this Manoa, the strange land of his discovery. We head east on 86th, back to the Park.
Thanks be to God the air is very soft like April at Seville; and it is a pleasure to be here, so balmy are the breezes.

On the Promenade, a Hispanic peddler of gelato.
Limón, por favor
. Pinprick by pinprick, back in time when the world was fresh. Near blind.
A small whale near shore?
A stalk laden with rose berries, in plain light of day birds flying from winter. Heaven on earth awaiting his discovery of a flickering mirage.

We are plotting a surge. Our Republic—mine, yours. It’s dumb to sign off on this country, like some old lefty still humming “The Internationale.” Ten, twenty thousand troops will tidy up, bring
them
round to our way of thinking. Not thinking, just watching the reality show. It comes on after the weather, which has been lovely, day after day of sun withholding the sharp promise of Fall. I still speak of my outrage launched some years ago. The edge has dulled, needs to be honed. Time was, we took out the whetstone, sharpened the blade. In the past, wars beyond our recall were taught in school. How the Civilized Tribes were sent off on the Trail of Tears,
that from these honored dead, that we here highly resolve
(each child in turn reciting by the schoolroom flag); how during the Mexican-American War our town in the Berkshires chose the Mex name, Monterey. This war, that war, how the Austrian girl was instructed to kneel when she kissed the Cardinal’s ring; how the Spaniards got rid of the Moors, a costly operation, so Columbus shipped out for the gold. How the pilot of the
Santa María
sang a chant marking time, first note to last, forward to aft. Depending on wind and tide, on flotsam and jetsam near shore, on words lost in the wind,
Salve,
the ship would make harbor. How men have always been intimidated by animals they fear, nothing new siccing dogs on prisoners. And did I go on about Walter Reed, while deplorable, it’s nowhere near as unsanitary as hospitals were in the Civil War.
This war, that war, my father deliced soldiers who survived the Battle of the Argonne. Ran a hot rod up the seams of their clothes, much like the iron instrument once used to curl hair.

You said:
Take it down a peg. You’re edgy.

You flapped the
Wall Street Journal
against your thigh; a respectful review of a movie we might want to see.

Your instructive tone is troubling. It’s the Park I have going for me, new material—tourism, birding, our looming towers preserved in bourgeois splendor. I spoke then of my Scheherazade mode, of watching the clock run down, of my balancing act that’s solo, though often I depend on a fellow traveler.
Like Chaucer, don’t you know?

It’s Fall in
Central Park.

—St. Augustine,
Confessions,
X, 12

 

We had been best of friends, boyhood friends. A possible way to begin? My profession, such as it is, does not lend itself easily to words. Numbers are my game. At times I must explain as I chalk the blackboard. Given
x
+
y
and
xy
find
x
and
y
, simple stuff, but this is a confounding story. Bertie, Chairman and CEO of Skylark, a telecommunications empire—so his enterprise is called in the business section of the
Times—
Bertie is charged with conspiracy to commit fraud. I am waiting to take the stand as a character witness, have been waiting for two days, as you well know, since I deliver Cyril to school while you stay home with Maisy, our congested girl once again prisoner of the nebulizer. But this is not a family story. Cyril delivered, I head down to the Federal Courthouse we’ve often seen on cop shows. The echoing hallways are unfamiliar off screen, dismal. I have been called to testify that Bertie is an upright player in the financial games of this republic, in sum, a good old boy, has been since I first knew him, eighth grade. He is charged with backdating his options, tinkering with the books of his corporation so that gain became loss, or vice versa, good tricks that would please my students, many of them preparing for their future in the business world.

I am writing in the small green notebook in which you record our sightings of northeastern birds. It has been years since I scribbled more than a quick note with pen on paper. Attorney Thaddeus Sylvan informed me that Security might not look kindly on my laptop, though my life and times are easily accessed, from the incompleteness of my Yale degree to my credit rating to the theorem I am attempting to work to its probable conclusion. Your notebook slipped easily into the pocket of a gray flannel suit worn to Wall Street by my grandfather. I rescued it along with his pocketwatch, so that I might wear it when called to testify on behalf of Bertram Boyce, who’s between a rock and a hard place. Silenced, I resort to the shorthand of clichés; sequestered in a small room with unforgiving metal chairs and a behemoth of a scarred wood table. It seems, as I look over the page, that I write in a retro voice much like my grandfather’s. Cyril O’Connor was a gent who was formal at breakfast, who muted his affection at bedtime and contained his exuberance when our Yankees won the game. A shame you never knew him.

Bear with me, Lou. I will ease up. I’m attempting to describe the occasion when I reattached to Bertie, who I must claim as my good friend. You were along for the ride. It is best to turn back to that day on which Bert and Artie found each other again, embraced in a Judas moment, though who betrays, who saves the day is yet to be determined. Should anyone audit this memory bank or question its inventions, they must know you cannot testify against me, insofar as you are my loving wife.

 

 

Field Notes: October 12, 2007, 3:30 P.M. U.S. Weather Station, Central Park, 65°-70° (trusting to memory, therefore guessing), possible afternoon shower.

A volley of shots in the distance. A thrasher fluttered into the bulrushes. I faked a pistol with my hand.
Backfire.

A great egret flew to the island in Turtle Pond. Displaying his annoyance, he chose not to perform his strut. In something of a huff, you lowered your binoculars. We’d come for songbirds stopping off on their migration to pleasant winter climes. The day was unseasonably warm, as though the years flipped fast forward and phoebes had long abandoned the sheltering grasses round the pond.

Lou, there was nothing to fear on a Monday afternoon in Central Park. Above—swift sailing puff clouds; below—still water glazed in sunlight.

A second volley.

I know it’s backfire,
you said, convincing yourself no sharpshooter crawled the swampy undergrowth. Took me a week to get you to come birding, never my great thrill, yours. I wanted to see your pleasure at the green gold of the warblers, observe your full attention sketching their pinstripe tails. I wanted you to breathe easy, Lou, for a few hours of the day. Our Sylvie, more than friend, who often looks after the children, had gone off, a visit to her stepdaughter in sunny CA. You checked your watch, opened this small spiral notebook to record our sighting of the egret and the single thrasher in the reeds repeating his mockingbird cry. This outing was going as well as could be expected, given we had abandoned our children to a student of mine with no experience in kid care other than a brood of brothers back home.

Turtle Pond lies directly below Belvedere Castle, once a stone shell, a hollow stage set built to enchant the eye. All such notes, Lou, come by way of my grandfather, a would be historian if life had not ordained his career on Wall Street, allowing only an occasional Sunday walk in the Park to instruct a boy. So, if I include the Delacorte Theater with its seats facing an empty pit, we might have been a couple of lost ground lings from a pageant of heroic legends. Tourists and a busload of schoolchildren were on the viewing terrace above, looking down from the battlements on the little body of water and the island both, as their guide blasted through a megaphone, ENTIRELY MAN MADE. A disappointment to his audience surely, but there we were by way of entertainment, Louise Moffett and Arthur Freeman, playing our observation of the birds for all to see. With the next volley of earsplitting pops, you mimed fright. If these outlanders had simply turned from us, looked down other side of the Castle, they might have seen men in their Conservatory jackets attempting to deal with a disabled tractor backfiring at the utility shed. I enclosed you in the rough body hold of a protective embrace. How long had such childish fun been in short supply? Shrugging free of me, your cap tumbled down the embankment. Artie to the rescue. In a princely gesture, I set it atilt on your head. Worry lines not permanently etched in your brow were hidden in the shadow of the bill, but your cheeks were ghostly pale in the bright light of day. You tucked in the ponytail. That day plays a PowerPoint show in my head: Here’s the moody egret, here a lone phoebe seeking shelter in the reeds from the guide blasting Vista Rock with misinformation, here’s my wife, gorgeous and plain. Mind if I put that down? You insist you are a throwback to Household Mom in black-and-white reruns. I might say
a fading American rose.
I still call you
Miss Wisconsin. Cheese, say cheese.

Pen poised above this very notebook, the stern set of your mouth would not give way to a smile as you estimated the great egret’s height. I brushed the wet grit of the embankment off my khakis. Then, as though to amuse in a game of I Spy, I trained my binoculars on the foot soldiers above. The schoolchildren, you may recall, waved little flags—red, white and green—but the tourists seemed puzzled or plain embarrassed by their bird’s-eye view of us horsing around. What had they seen? A private moment, always lovers in the Park, though not often caught in an act of observation. Adjusting my lens, I dictated notes to you on the enemy’s shaggy plumage, their slack mandibles and splintered beaks.

They could not hear me describe them as goosey gander, common tern, but no doubt heard you cry, “Oh, Artie.” The high chirp of your laughter reached up to include them as they watched our tussle, your love punch to my ribs and my gentlemanly gesture, taking your arm as we climbed toward the Great Lawn, where soccer practice was in progress, boys in the blue jerseys of Trinity School. Next the Pinetum, where you hoped for a red crested kinglet, then the Reservoir, expecting the arrival of grebes basking in the sun. Again you checked the time. Our Maisy had the first cold of that peculiar season, which did not deliver crisp Fall days. I’m uncertain how much to recall of our encounter with Bertram Boyce, not yet charged with backdating options of Skylark shares, but I am certain I lured you away from the apartment with Maisy’s congestion, with Cyril’s trembling tower of Lincoln Logs. I offered you the consuming delight of birds in their citified migration.