When we left the museum, the snowflakes had ceased to fall. In the busy Manhattan streets there was no memory of them now. A bright harsh sun shone down almost vertically between the tall buildings but everywhere else was shadow, without color, and cold.
By late afternoon Daddy and I had shopped at Tiffany & Co., and Bergdorf Goodman, and Saks, and Bloomingdale’s; we had purchased beautiful expensive items to be delivered to us at an address in New Jersey — “On the far side of the River Styx.” One purchase, at Steuben on Fifth Avenue, was a foot-high glass sculpture that might have been a woman, or an angel, or a wide-winged bird; it shone with light, so that you could almost not see it; Daddy laughed, saying, “The Ice Queen! — exactly”; and so this present was sent to Momma at 31 Central Park South. As we walked through the great glittering stores Daddy held my hand so that I would not be lost from him; these great stores, Daddy said, were the cathedrals of America; they were the shrines and reliquaries and catacombs of America; if you could not be happy in such stores, you could not be happy anywhere; you could not be a true American. And Daddy recited stories to me, some of these were fairy tales he’d read to me when I’d been a little little girl, a baby; when Daddy had lived with Momma and me, the three of us in a brownstone house with our own front door, and no doorman and no elevators; on our ground-floor windows there were curving iron bars, so that no one could break in; there were electronic devices of all kinds, so that no one could break in; our house had two trees at the curb, and these, too, were protected by curving iron bars; we lived in a narrow, quiet street a half-block from a huge, important building — the Metropolitan Museum of Art; when Daddy had been on television sometimes, and his photograph in the papers; they would say I knew nothing about this, I was too young to know, but I did; I knew. Just as I knew it was strange for Daddy to be paying for our presents with cash from his wallet, and out of thick-stuffed envelopes in his inside coat pockets; it was strange, for no one else paid in such a way; and others stared at him; stared at him as if memorizing him — the vigor of his voice and his shining face and his knowledge that he, and I, who was his daughter, were set off from the dull, dreary ordinariness of the rest of the world; they stared, they were envious of us, though smiling, always smiling, if Daddy glanced at them, or spoke with them. For such was Daddy’s power.
I was dazed with exhaustion; I was feverish; I could not have said how long Daddy and I had been shopping, on our Saturday adventure; yet I loved it, that strangers observed us, and remarked how pretty I was; and to Daddy sometimes they would say, Your face is familiar, are you on TV? But Daddy just laughed and kept moving, for there was no time to spare that day.
Out on the street, one of the wide, windy avenues, Daddy hailed a cab like any other pedestrian. When had he dismissed the limousine? — I couldn’t remember.
It was a bumpy, jolting ride. The rear seat was torn. There was no heat. In the rearview mirror a pair of liquidy black eyes regarded Daddy with silent contempt. Daddy fumbled paying the fare, a $50 bill slipped from his fingers — “Keep the change, driver, and thanks!” Yet even then the eyes did not smile at us; these were not eyes to be purchased.
We were in a dark, tiny wine cellar on 47th Street near Seventh Avenue where Daddy ordered a carafe of red wine for himself and a soft drink for me and where he could make telephone calls in a private room at the rear; I fell asleep, and when I woke up there was Daddy standing by our table, too restless to sit; his face was rubbery and looked stretched; his hair had fallen and lay in damp strands against his forehead; globules of sweat like oily pearls ran down his cheeks. He smiled with his mouth, saying, “There you are, Princess! Up and at ’em.” For already it was time to leave, and more than time. Daddy had learned from an aide the bad news, the news he’d been expecting. But shielding me from it of course. For only much later — years later — would I learn that, that afternoon, a warrant for Daddy’s arrest had been issued by the Manhattan district attorney’s office; by some of the very people for whom, until a few months ago, Daddy had worked. It would be charged against him that as a prosecuting attorney Daddy had misused the powers of his office, he had solicited and accepted bribes, he had committed perjury upon numerous occasions, he had falsely informed upon certain persons under investigation by the district attorney’s office, he had blackmailed others, he had embezzled funds... such charges were made against Daddy, such lies concocted by his enemies who had been jealous of him for many years and wanted him defeated, destroyed. One day I would learn that New York City police detectives had come to Daddy’s apartment (on East 92nd Street and First Avenue) to arrest him and of course hadn’t found him; they’d gone to 31 Central Park South and of course hadn’t found him; Momma told them Daddy had taken me to the Bronx Zoo, or in any case that had been his plan; Momma told them that Daddy would be bringing me back home at 5:30 p.m., or in any case he’d promised to do so; if they waited for him in the lobby downstairs would they please please not arrest him in front of his daughter, Momma begged. Yet policemen were sent to the Bronx Zoo to search for Daddy there; a manhunt for Daddy at the Bronx Zoo! — how Daddy would have laughed. And now an alert was out in Manhattan for Daddy, he was a “wanted” man, but already Daddy had shrewdly purchased a new coat in Saks, a London Fog trench coat the shade of damp stone, and made arrangements for the store to deliver his camel’s-hair coat to the New Jersey address; already Daddy had purchased a gray fedora hat, and he’d exchanged his amber-tinted sunglasses for darker glasses, with heavy black plastic frames; he’d purchased a knotty gnarled cane, imported from Australia, and walked now with a limp — I stared at him, almost I didn’t recognize him, and Daddy laughed at me. In the Shamrock Pub on Ninth Avenue and 39th Street he’d engaged a youngish blond woman with hair braided in cornrows to accompany us while he made several other stops; the blond woman had a glaring-bright face like a billboard; her eyes were ringed in black and lingered on me — “What a sweet, pretty little girl! And what a pretty coat and hat!” — but she knew not to ask questions. She walked with me gripping my hand in the angora glove pretending she was my momma and I was her little girl, and Daddy behind hobbling on his cane; shrewdly a few yards behind so it would not have seemed (if anyone was watching) that Daddy was with us; this was a game we were playing, Daddy said; it was a game that made me excited, and nervous; I was laughing and couldn’t stop; the blond woman scolded me — “Shhh! Your Daddy will be angry.” And a little later the blond woman was gone.