Emma kissed her mother good-bye.
They talked some more, but after a while fell into their own individual reveries. It would be the New Year soon. A new decade, and in not too many years, a new century. You can’t stop time, no matter how much you do or don’t want to, Faith reflected. Richard had been right about one thing: Nathan Fox’s murder was tied to his past. A line from Shakespeare’s Tempest—she’d been Miranda in college—popped into her head: “what’s past is prologue.” She looked over at Emma. She was shaking the snow globe Faith had given her and watching the flakes swirl about the tiny city inside.
Epilogue
How could I have thought I was so invulnerable? How could I have taken such a thing on? At the end, lives were lost, reputations destroyed, peace of mind shattered forever. But we were safe. Emma and I. Does she see what I see in my dreams? As we’ve grown older, we’ve become the kind of friends who don’t keep in touch. Looking at each other is too painful. We know too much—know how close we came to never knowing what we have: small arms reaching up for us, large ones reaching down, encircling, engulfing.
How could I have taken such a risk?
But there really wasn’t ever any question.
Sometimes life lets us make choices. Sometimes it reaches out and chooses us.
Author’s Note
The Big Apple. Jazz musicians coined the city’s familiar moniker in the twenties. There were plenty of apples to pick from the tree, but only one Big Apple, only one New York. If you had a gig there, you had it made.
The ultimate destination.
Growing up in northern New Jersey, I felt much the same. As teenagers, my friends and I used to say we lived “just outside the city,” omitting the fact that we had to cross a state line to get there. At twelve, we were deemed old enough to take the DeCamp bus together to Port Authority—in the daytime. Armed with the small penciled maps my mother would draw, we’d head for Manhattan. One Saturday, it would be museums. My cousin John convinced me to stand in line with him for several hours outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art to catch a sixty-second glimpse of the Mona Lisa, on loan from the Louvre. It’s the wait I remember best now, the mix of New Yorkers and out-of-towners, the jokes, the stories—holding places while people dashed off for a dog from the Sabrett’s “all beef kosher franks” stand. Another Saturday, we’d go from box office to box office on Broadway until we got tickets to a matinee (prices were much lower in the early sixties). We saw everything from Richard Burton in Hamlet to Anthony Newley in Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. Sometimes we’d just wander, walking miles, entranced by the dramatic changes in the neighborhoods from one block to the next. Bialys and bagels gave way to egg rolls, followed swiftly by cannolis as we moved uptown.
No time of year was more magical than December, and from the time I was a small child, there was always a special trip during the season to look at the Rockefeller Center tree and the department store windows.
Other times of the year, my parents took us to the ballet, opera—the old Met with the “cloth of gold” curtain—concerts, and special exhibits at the museums—the Calder mobiles, like nothing anyone had seen before, spiraling in the enormous spiral of the Guggenheim.
Then there were the restaurants—or rather, one restaurant: Horn and Hardart’s Automat. My 1964 Frommer’s guide advises: “Inquire of any passer-by, and you’ll be directed to one that’s usually no more than a block-or-two away.” Sadly, they have all disappeared, and trying to explain the concept to my fifteen-year-old son—you put nickels in the slot next to the food you wanted, lifted the little glass door, snatched it out, and watched the empty space revolve, instantly producing another dish—is well nigh impossible. Fortunately, there are old movies. Just as difficult is describing the food—the superb crusty macaroni and cheese with tiny bits of tomato, the warm deep-dish apple pie with vanilla sauce, the baked beans in their own little pot. Most New Yorkers of a certain age wax nostalgic about Automat food—the meat loaf! And a whole meal for one dollar.
My husband is the genuine article. A native New Yorker, born and bred in the Bronx. “The Beautiful Bronx” when he was growing up, and we have a book of the same name to prove it. When he meets someone else from the borough, talk immediately turns to the Grand Concourse, the “nabe,” and egg creams. Where he lived is now part of the Cross Bronx Expressway, but he can still point out his elementary school as we whiz past. New Yorkers are very sentimental.
And to continue in the manner of Faith’s sweeping generalizations, New Yorkers are also very rude, very generous, very funny, very stylish, very quirky, and very fast. Genetically, they have more molecules than most other Americans. The moment I step off the train or plane from Boston, my pace quickens in imitation, my gaze narrows, and my senses sharpen. Forget all those New York designer fragrances. The essence is adrenaline, pure and simple.
This book is a paean to New York City past, present, and future—written about the end of one very distinctive decade as the city is poised for another—and a new century at that. At the close of 1989, the last thing Faith imagines is that in a few years she’ll be in exile—living in the bucolic orchards west of Boston.
She’ll keep her edge, though, will continue to read the Times and make periodic journeys back to Bloomies, Balducci’s, and Barneys, always keeping in mind what the comedian Harry Hershfield said: “New York: Where everyone mutinies but no one deserts.” 1900 or 2000—some things never change. It’s a wonderful town.
EXCERPTS FROM
HAVE FAITH
IN YOUR KITCHEN
BY Faith Sibley
A WORK IN PROGRESS
PORK LOIN STUFFED
WITH WINTER FRUITS
41⁄2 to 5 pounds boned pork
3 tablespoons
loin, center cut
vegetable oil
1 large apple, peeled, cored,
Salt
and cubed
Freshly ground black
Juice from 1⁄2 lemon
pepper
Approximately 12 pitted
3⁄4 cup dry white wine
prunes
3⁄4 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Ask your butcher to cut a pocket in the center of the pork loin and tie it at one-inch intervals, or do this yourself at home.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Toss the apple cubes with the lemon juice to prevent dis-coloration. Then stuff the pork, alternating apple cubes and prunes.
Put the butter and oil in a large casserole with a lid, a Dutch oven or Le Creuset–type cookware is good. Place the casserole on top of the stove over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add the loin, turning it so that it browns evenly on all sides. Season with the salt and pepper as you cook it. Remove the fat with a bulb baster.
Pour in the wine and cook in the center of the oven for approximately an hour and a half. Use a meat thermometer to check to be sure it’s done, but not overdone.
Place the loin on a heated platter and finish the sauce by first skimming off any fat produced during the cooking, then bringing the remaining liquid to a boil. Reduce the heat and add the cream, stirring constantly. Serve the sauce separately in a gravy boat.