He came in with that relieved look.
-There you are, he said.
-Here I am.
He dropped into a chair. His hair was combed and his tie sported a crisp Windsor knot, but his turnout couldn't hide the fact that he was weary. With puffy eyes and depleted drive, he looked like a brand-new father who's been shocked into working extra hours by the arrival of twins.
-How'd it go? he asked, tentatively.
-Fine, Tinker. Evey's tougher than you think. She's going to be okay.
I almost went on to say that he should relax a little, give Evey some space, let nature take its course-But then, I wasn't the one who'd been driving the car.
-We have an office in Palm Beach, he said after a moment. I'm thinking of taking her down there for a few weeks. Some warm weather and new surroundings. What do you think?
-Sounds great.
-I just think she could use a change of pace.
-You look like you could use one yourself.
He offered a tired smile in response.
When I stood to clear, he followed the empty plate with the eyes of a well-behaved dog. So, I made him his own batch of closed-kitchen eggs. I whisked them and fried them, plated and served them. Earlier, I had seen an unopened bottle of cooking sherry in one of the cabinets. I pulled the cork and poured us each a glass. We sipped the sherry and drifted from topic to topic in unnecessarily hushed tones.
The notion of Florida brought mention of the Keys which brought memories to Tinker of reading Treasure Island as a boy and of digging with his brother for backyard doubloons; which brought memories to both of us of Robinson Crusoe and daydreams of being stranded; which got us on the track of what two belongings we'd want in our pockets when we were eventually shipwrecked alone: for Tinker (sensibly) a jackknife and a flint; for me (insensibly) a pack of cards and Walden by Thoreau-the only book in which infinity can be found on every other page.
And for the moment, we let ourselves imagine that we were still in Max's diner-with our knees knocking under the tabletop and seagulls circling the Trinity steeple and all the brightly colored possibilities dangled by the New Year still within our reach.
Old times, as my father used to say: If you're not careful, they'll gut you like a fish.
In the foyer, Tinker took both my hands in his again.
-It was good to see you, Katey.
-It was good to see you too.
As I stepped back, he didn't immediately let go. He looked as if he was wrestling with whether to say something. Instead, with Eve asleep at the end of the hall, he kissed me.
It wasn't a forceful kiss. It was an inquiry. All I had to do was lean a little forward and he would have wrapped his arms around me. But at this juncture, where would that have gotten anybody?
I freed my hands and put a palm on the smooth skin of his cheek, taking comfort in the well-counseled patience for that which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and, most importantly, endures them.
-You're a sweet one, Tinker Grey.
The elevator cables whooshed past as the car approached. I dropped my hand before Hamilton pulled back the elevator door. Tinker nodded and put his hands in his jacket pockets.
-Thanks for the eggs, he said.
-Don't make too much of it. It's the only thing I know how to cook. Tinker smiled, showing a flash of his normal self. I got on the elevator.
-We didn't get a chance to talk about your new place, he said. Can I come by and see it? Maybe next week?
-That would be great.
Hamilton was waiting respectfully for the conversation to end.
-Okay, Hamilton, I said.
He closed the gate and pulled the lever, initiating our descent; and then he whistled a little tune to himself as he watched the floors pass.
After the Civil War the names of the founding fathers like Washington and Jefferson became plenty popular with his race. But here was the first Negro I'd ever met named after the death-by-dueling proponent of the central bank. When we reached the lobby, I stepped off the elevator and turned to ask him about that. But a bell rang and he gave a shrug. The great brass doors of the elevator quietly closed.
They were embossed with a dragon-crested shield inscribed with the motto of the Beresford: FRONTA NULLA FIDES. Place No Trust in Appearances.
I'll say.
Despite the fact that the groundhog had cast no shadow, winter laid siege on New York for another three weeks. The crocuses froze in Central Park; the songbirds, reaching the only sensible conclusion, doubled back to Brazil; and as for Mistah Tinkah, why the following Monday, he took Miss Evelyn to Palm Beach without so much as a word.
CHAPTER SIX.
The Cruelest Month.
One night in April, I was standing in the Wall Street stop of the IRT waiting to hoi polloi home. It had been twenty minutes since the previous train and the platform was crowded with hats and sighs and roughly folded afternoon editions. On the ground nearby was an overstuffed valise bound with string. But for the absence of children, it could have been a way station in a time of war.
A man who was squeezing past me knocked my elbow. He had brown hair and a cashmere coat. Like one out of keeping with the times, he turned to apologize. And for the briefest moment I thought it was Tinker.
But I should have known better.
Tinker Grey was nowhere near the Interborough Rapid Transit. At the end of their first week in Palm Beach, Eve had sent me a postcard from the Breakers Hotel where she and Tinker were holed up. Sis, we miss you somethin' awful-or so she wrote-and Tinker echoed the sentiment in the margin, wrapping little block letters around my address and up toward the stamp. On the picture, Eve had drawn an arrow pointing to their balcony overlooking the beach. She drew a sign stuck in the sand that read: NO JUMPING. The postscript read: See you in a week. But two weeks later, I got a postcard from the marina at Key West.
In the meantime, I took five thousand pages of dictation. I typed four hundred thousand words in language as gray as the weather. I sutured split infinitives and hoisted dangling modifiers and wore out the seat of my best flannel skirt. At night, alone at my kitchen table I ate peanut butter on toast, mastered the ruff and slough and waded into the novels of E. M. Forster just to see what all the fuss was about. In all, I saved fourteen dollars and fifty-seven cents.
My father would have been proud.
The gracious stranger maneuvered across the platform and took a position beside a mousy young woman who looked up at his approach and briefly met my gaze. It was Charlotte Sykes, the typing prodigy who sat to my left.
Charlotte had thick black eyebrows, but she also had delicate features and beautiful skin. She could have made a favorable impression on someone if she hadn't acted as though at any moment the city was going to step on her.
Tonight she was sporting a pillbox hat with a funereal chrysanthemum stitched to its crown. She lived somewhere on the Lower East Side and she seemed to be taking her cue from me as to how late one should work, because she often ended up on the platform a few minutes on my heels. Charlotte took a furtive look in my direction, obviously working up the courage to approach. Lest there be any doubt, I took A Room with a View from my purse and opened to Chapter VI. It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book, even if it is a foolish romance: George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress The beating of flowers was drowned out by the brakes of a train. The refugees on the platform gathered their possessions and readied themselves to fight for passage. I let them push their way around me. When the station was this crowded you were generally better off waiting for the next train.
Strategically positioned across the platform, rush hour conductors in little green caps acted like cops at the scene of an accident, broadening their shoulders and preparing to push people forward or back as necessary. The doors opened and the crowd surged. The blue-black chrysanthemum on Charlotte's hat bobbed ahead like flotsam on the sea.
-Make room in there, shouted the conductors, shoving high and low alike.
A moment later the train was gone, leaving a smattering of wiser folk behind. I turned the page secure in my solitude.
-Katherine!
-Charlotte . . .
At the last minute, she must have doubled back, like a Cherokee scout.
-I didn't know you took this train, she said disingenuously.
-Every day.
She blushed sensing that she'd been caught in a fib. The blush brought badly needed color to her cheeks. She should have fibbed more often.
-Where do you live? she asked.
-On Eleventh Street.
Her face brightened.
-We're nearly neighbors! I live on Ludlow. A few blocks east of Bowery.
-I know where Ludlow is.
She smiled apologetically.
-Of course.
Charlotte was holding a large document with both hands in front of her waist, the way a schoolgirl holds her textbooks. From the thickness of it you could tell it was the draft of a merger agreement or an offering plan. Whatever it was, she shouldn't have had it with her.
I let the silence grow awkward.
Though apparently not awkward enough.
-Did you grow up in the neighborhood? she asked.
-I grew up in Brighton Beach.
-Jeepers, she said.
She was about to ask what Brighton Beach was like or which subway ran there or if I'd ever been to Coney Island, but a train came to my rescue. There were still only a scattering of people on the platform so the conductors ignored us. They smoked cigarettes with worldly indifference like soldiers in between assaults.
Charlotte took the seat beside me. On the bench facing us, there was a middle-aged chambermaid disinclined to raise her eyes. She wore an old burgundy coat over her black and white uniform and a pair of practical shoes. Above her head hung a poster from the Department of Health discouraging the practice of sneezing without a handkerchief.
-How long have you worked for Miss Markham? Charlotte asked. It was to Charlotte's credit that she said Miss Markham rather than Quiggin & Hale.
-Since 1934, I said.
-That must make you one of the senior girls!
-Not by a long shot.
We were quiet for a few seconds. I thought maybe she was finally getting the message. Instead she launched into a monologue.
-Isn't Miss Markham something else? I've never met anyone like her. She is just so impressive. Did you know that she speaks French? I heard her speaking it with one of the partners. I swear, she can see the draft of a letter once and remember it word for word.
Charlotte was suddenly chattering at twice her usual pace. I couldn't tell if it was nerves or an effort to say as much as possible before the train arrived at her stop.
-. . . But then all the people at Q&H are just so especially nice. Even the partners! I was in Mr. Quiggin's office just the other day to get some things signed. Have you been in his office? Why, of course you have. You know how he has that fish tank just filled with fish. Well, there was this one little fish that was the most amazing shade of blue and its nose was pressed against the glass. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Even though Miss Markham tells us not to let our eyes wander around the partners' offices. But when Mr. Quiggin finished he came right around his desk and told me the Latin names of each and every one of those fish!
As Charlotte was speeding along, the chambermaid across the aisle had raised her gaze. She was staring at Charlotte and listening as if she had stood in front of such a fish tank one day not long ago, when she too had had delicate features and beautiful skin, when her eyes were hopeful and wide and the world had seemed splendid and fair.
The train arrived at Canal Street and the doors opened. Charlotte was talking so fast she didn't notice.
-Isn't this your stop?
Charlotte jumped. She gave a sweet, mousy wave and disappeared.
It was only when the doors closed that I saw the merger agreement on the bench beside me. Clipped to the front was a note FROM THE DESK OF THOMAS HARPER, ESQ, with the name of a Camden & Clay attorney scrolled in Harper's prep school cursive. Presumably, he had sloughed off the delivery of this draft on Charlotte by applying a little schoolboy charm. It wouldn't have taken much. She was born to be charmed. Or intimidated. Either way, it showed a solid lack of judgment on both their parts. But if New York was a many-cogged machine, then lack of judgment was the grease that kept the gears turning smoothly for the rest of us. They'd both end up getting what they deserved one way or another. I lay the agreement back on the bench.
We were still stalled at the station. On the platform a few commuters had gathered in front of the closed doors looking hopefully through the glass like Mr. Quiggin's fish. I redirected my gaze across the aisle and found the chambermaid staring at me. With her doleful eyes, she looked down at the forgotten document. It wouldn't be the both of them who got what they deserved, she seemed to be saying. That charming boy with his fine enunciation and floppy bangs, they'll let him talk his way out of it. And little miss wide eyes, she'll pay the price for the both of them.
The doors opened again and the commuters piled on board.
-Shit, I said.
I grabbed the agreement and got an arm between the doors just before they closed.
-Come on, sweet stuff, said a conductor.
-Sweet your own stuff, I replied.
I headed up the east side stair and began working my way toward Ludlow looking among the wide-brimmed hats and the Brylcreemed hair for a bobbing black chrysanthemum. If I didn't catch her in five blocks, I told myself, this agreement was going to merge with an ash can.
I found her on the corner of Canal and Christie.
She was standing in front of Schotts & Sons-kosher purveyors of all things pickled. She wasn't shopping. She was talking to a diminutive old woman with black eyes in a familiarly funereal dress. The old woman had this evening's lox wrapped in yesterday's news.
-Excuse me.
Charlotte looked up. An expression of surprise turned to a girlish smile.
-Katherine!
She gestured to the old woman at her side.
-This is my grandmother.