“Hi, I got the landlord to let me in. You have a new lock.”
“That’s right, someone busted in.”
“Well, you’ve often enough heard me say I want to find my real mother.”
“Yes, I have heard you say that.”
“To know what her face is like when she’s smiling and when her face is sad.”
“Yes. I’ve heard you say that.”
“Well, I found her. I have her address. And I’m really truly sorry for what I did to the piano.”
“Well, someone repaired it. Only needs more tuning now.”
“I know. And it’s all paid for. I don’t know what overcame me. But I shouldn’t have done it. And I do owe you an apology. Which goes beyond the cut piano strings. Your minuet, maybe not brilliant, but I think it’s pretty good. I took a copy of the score and was going to tear it up but instead had it played. But now I’m here to ask you to do me a large favor, which you don’t have to even consider if you don’t want to.”
“What is it.”
“I want you to come with me to see my mother. I don’t want to go alone. She lives in Syracuse. There’s a train today at two o’clock out of Penn Station.”
“How did you know I’d be here.”
“Dru seems to know where you are all the time. At least I can take my dream now, and if it gets finally ripped to shreds, bury it. As for a father, and after what has been vaguely hinted of my mother, once a beauty queen, how can I ever dream that my father was anything much.”
“What does ‘much’ mean.”
“It means more, I guess. More than my mother. And I suppose if you come right down to it and dispose of all the bullshit in most people’s minds, it mostly means money. And since I don’t have much of that at the moment, I don’t guess I’m anything much myself. I exhausted all my girlfriends’ largesse, which wasn’t much, either. And leading them on, I compromised myself with a few ex-boyfriends. But I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you with your Irish Catholic morality, that making a living is no problem for a girl with my figure and looks in this town. But I don’t want you to strain your imagination or jump to conclusions. Dru of course, is back from Montana.”
Ominous news. Thought once when she was supposed to be in Montana that I caught her face looking up at the windows from across the street. Amazing what women will do to you and then present themselves again to apologize if they want you to do something for them. As she says she’ll pay the fare, I try to think of an excuse not to go. To have to sit a few hours on the train. Could fall asleep and say things like I did about wrong information at Princeton and instead say, hey, Dru, what a fantastic delicious fuck you are. But had already vowed that after the girl in the bus station, if it were in my province to do so, I would avoid if ever I could, to disappoint anyone. Even to giving the panhandler lurking under the Queensborough Bridge nearly my last dime which I knew would disappear down his throat in beer. But found another quarter and an Indian head and buffalo nickel in the corner of my dressing table drawer. I always find myself making sure the coin says “Liberty” on it. And on a quarter dollar, that it says “E Pluribus Unum.” An eagle in flight over three stars. And added up, it was thirty cents. And fifty cents was the biggest amount I ever got as a child to go visit the Museum of the American Indian. And now, to forgive this distraught girl her trespass against me. And find her alone in her vulnerable helplessness. My prick suddenly gone rigid. My face flushed with embarrassment. To suddenly have the most appallingly overwhelming desire to fuck Sylvia on the spot.
“Okay, I will go with you.”
“You don’t mind, do you, Stephen, changing your clothes.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes.”
“Nothing, except perhaps not entirely suitable for meeting my mother, whom I’ve never met and who doesn’t even know I’m coming. Would you mind wearing a white shirt and if you have some kind of old sort of striped school tie. That is, if your school ever had one.”
“Holy Christ.”
“Well just in case we were invited to stay to dinner or something. How do I know she doesn’t have someone like Gilbert looking down his nose as he has occasionally dared to do to me wearing something he considers too casual for the room he refers to as the drawing room.”
“What about the holes in the toes of my socks.”
“Well, you’re not taking off your shoes, I hope.”
It was as if all was en fête. Two smartly dressed people getting resentful looks heading around the corner of Pell Street into Mulberry where Sylvia had one of the family’s Pierce Arrows parked, with its special arms that adjusted downwards for elbows and footrests that adjusted upwards for your feet. The Triumphington chauffeur in tow, called Jimmy, and terrified, eyeing the passing pedestrian traffic in case someone tried to open up his locked car door and jump on him. But he was as safe as any of the big Mafia dons, who weren’t that far away, also with their big black limousines parked with their chauffeurs.
“Stephen, I’m scared.”
“Sylvia, it’s all going to be all right.”
Up past Union Square, Madison Square and all the hotels, where in each I wonder who it is who lonely lurks. The Flatiron Building like the prow of a ship sailing north on Broadway. Turn west on Thirty-first Street. St. Francis of Assisi Monastery right in the middle of the block. And arriving safely. The Travelers Aid Society, whose office is in this massive station housing the Pennsylvania, the Long Island, Lehigh Valley, the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad lines.
With her cloak aflow and a slender bouquet of red roses and a white-beribboned aqua box from Tiffany’s tucked in her arm, Sylvia bought and paid for parlor-car tickets. The train moving slowly off through the darkness of the tunnel under the Hudson. Stare out into the passing bulbs of light and the snaking wires, pipes, and conduits. Sylvia pulling off her black kidskin gloves. Leafing through her pile of magazines and newspapers. Quickly reading as she turned the pages with her manicured fingernails. A faint trace of lipstick on her lips and a white silk scarf held at her throat with the long gold pin that she wore in her stock while foxhunting. Any second I thought she might turn to me and say, You’re fucking my adoptive mother. Or, That son of a bitch Max friend of yours, who married my best friend for her money and ruined her life. But she leafed again and again through the fashion magazines and even fell asleep for a while between the towns of Poughkeepsie and Albany.
Outside the station at Syracuse, I got increasingly nervous as I somehow sensed that Sylvia’s mother did not have a long driveway up to her mansion and a Gilbert administering her household. And Sylvia’s hand trembled showing the taxi driver an address on a piece of paper, as if she didn’t want to say it out loud. And I could see why by the questionable first reaction of the taxi driver and his further suspiciousness as we progressed through Main Street to what was clearly the wrong side and shabby part of town. Stopping on a potholed unpaved road of warehouses, shacks and an engineering works parallel to the railway tracks. Sylvia anxiously leaning forward in her seat, glancing at the slip of paper in her hand.
“Driver, this couldn’t be the place.”
“Ma’am, this is the road you showed me on the paper. And there’s the number forty-eight right there plain as can be seen.”
“Jesus Christ. Well then, wait.”
“You betcha, ma’am. It sure looks like rain.”
Sylvia leaving her cloak behind her, climbing out of the taxi and standing on the roadway in front of the closed garage doors of a car-repair shop. And hesitating at the foot of a flight of ramshackle stairs up the side of a dirty paint-peeling brown clapboard frame building backing onto the railroad tracks. Shades drawn on two windows on the floor above the garage door. A sign. DRINK MISSION BELL SODA. Behind the building, a great monster of puffing steam passing, pulling a freight train. The taxi driver turning to speak over his shoulder.