Buch lesen: «Maynard and Jennica»

This comedy has five unequal parts, and what follows is

THE FIRST PART.

It is quite brief, and purely introductory.

JOAN TATE, tipsy after another revelatory lunch with her son, illustrates her point (early August 2000):

Here’s a famous story. And remember that I am his mother, so the fact that I am the one telling you this—that tells you something. It’s a famous story, and it shows you what kind of a person Manny is.

The year was—.Well, Scott and I had just sold the place on 72nd Street, so it was 1973, and Manny would have been nine years old. We were living in a three-bedroom on West 10th. It was rent-controlled and had twelve-foot ceilings, and you don’t want to know what we paid. We paid one-fifteen a month.

And when we lived on West 10th, Manny would wait for the school bus on 6th Avenue, on the corner, in front of Balducci’s. He went to school uptown, and the school had its own buses. So Manny and Dave Fowler and the other kids whose parents lived in the Village would all wait on that corner together, in front of Balducci’s, for the little squat yellow school bus. There was an air vent that blew warm air onto the sidewalk, and on cold mornings in the winter the kids would all fight over who got to stand under that vent. Dave Fowler, with his little backpack, would time the other kids on his wristwatch so they would all get their turn.

Except for Manny, who didn’t want to stand under the vent, and who never wore a hat, and who wanted to wait for the bus twenty feet away, in the ice and the snow, shivering.

Well, I asked him about it, and he said, “The air comes from Balducci’s cheese counter. It smells like what Dad eats.” Scott had this one unpasteurized Camembert he liked, which smelled like—which you just had to have smelled. Manny said, “Smells are the result of microscopic particles in the air, and I do not want microscopic particles of cheese hitting my head like meteors.” I told him that if he would just wear his stocking cap, then the smell wouldn’t get into his hair. And he said, “Stocking caps are undignified.” Well, I was his mother, I knew better than to try to argue with him about that, but I did ask him whether there was any kind of hat that he would consider dignified. So that he might wear a hat in the cold. And he said, “A bowler.” That was how we settled it. I made Scott take Manny uptown to find him a bowler.

It just goes to show you what kind of a nine-year-old Manny was. And it also goes to show you that he was the same then as he is now: fussy about the unlikeliest things, and picky, and obstinant—obstinate, and prepared to suffer for the strangest reasons. And so now, now when he tells me over lunch that he wants to change? Well, I am his mother—of course I am elated.

He says that the motes—the scales have fallen from his eyes. He says that he is tired of making things difficult for himself, that he’s tired of being in debt. This is the first I have heard about him being in debt, but he’s tired of it. He even told me he wants to take his romances more seriously. Might it be that now, now that Manny is thirty-six years old, I am finally going to get to meet one of his girlfriends? What kind of women is he even attracted to?

JENNICA GREEN, who never has any luck on Valentine’s Day, describes the evening of her boyfriend’s arrest (mid-February 2001):

This is so going to make me sound like one of those women, and I so am not one of those women.

All afternoon it was as if the city was as oblivious as I was to what was happening. Right up until two minutes before Arnie called from the police station, the city was, like, intent on being gorgeous. With the snow, and the serenity, and my first afternoon off in months. Deceiving me, you know? All afternoon I’d been communing peacefully with the awnings and the fire escapes and the lampposts. The elegant side of Soho. The wet black iron and the fresh white snow, in relief against each other. The sapphire light, the deep-sea light of a snowy day.

But sure enough, at five o’clock, just as I need to get a cab and get home and get packed, the snow … devolves into sleet.

The pretty drifts on the fire escapes and lampposts? Melting and drooling down, onto me. All the snowbanks on the sidewalk? Melting, simultaneously. The gutters are inundated. Frothing up this … filth. Ice, cigarettes, cellophane, flooding the street. The sewer grates are overcome. Spewing dirty water. Of course my umbrella is funneling the sleet straight into my shopping bags. And it’s dark, and my cell phone starts ringing, but I can’t get it.

Bear in mind, I’d been at work that morning. In my decent clothes. My black zipper boots? Sopping. My black coat? Sopping. The sleeve of my sweater? Like a wick, just sucking all this clammy, icy whatever straight from the stem of my umbrella up to my armpit. If you come from San Jose, California, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived in New York, you feel so … vulnerable to shabbiness.

I get to 6th Avenue, looking for a cab. And of course on 6th Avenue the wind tries to mug me. It has its fists wheeling. Wham, across my face. Wham, my bags are flailing around everywhere. And I’m trying to fend it off with my umbrella, but my umbrella is doing that gagging thing. You know, that thing umbrellas do when the wind gets them? Where they look like a cat coughing up a hairball? The only way I can keep my umbrella alive is by pointing it directly into the wind, which blocks my view down 6th Avenue, practically. And my cell phone is still going off, but I suddenly see this cab.

I don’t have a free hand, so I hail it with my umbrella. Getting myself even more drenched. But the cab starts flashing its turn signal. So it’s my cab, right? I got soaked trying to hail it, so it’s my cab. Right?

Which is when the crazy German woman materializes.

The cab had stopped … ten feet away from me? Fifteen? But from nowhere this crazy German woman has appeared and is opening the door to my cab.

She is dry. She has a cigarette in her hand, which she is putting out, and she has a muffin, which she is putting into her pocket. Getting in my cab. Huge, curly, wheat-blond hair with lots of ringlets, all pinned up like a diva’s. Getting into my cab. And, let me describe this coat she is wearing. It’s rubber, first of all, and white, and it goes down to her knees, with a belt and buttons but with a huge fur collar. Like, white rabbit fur. And she is wearing it with a mustard-yellow scarf and turquoise pants. Dry, and getting in my cab. It’s as if she had been waiting in a doorway for me to hail a cab for her. So I lose it. I’m like:

“Hey! Hey! That’s my cab!”

And she just gets in. Just opens the door, gets in, and reaches over to close the door. Ice is splashing me everywhere. My umbrella finally gags on its hairball and dies. My bags are beginning to tear. So I absolutely lose it. I scream, and I do mean scream:

“You fucking cunt … that’s my cab!”

And, all right. I don’t want this story to make me sound like one of those women, so let me tell you why I was in a hurry. Which only matters now to prove that I am not, whatever, a horrible person. So, my plan:

Step 1, at eight o’clock on Thursday night I would meet Arnie, with my bag packed.

Step 2, at eight-thirty we had reservations at Four Noodles, because we’d been warned to have one good meal before we left. Including by Rose, Arnie’s globetrotting grandmother Rose, who told us: “The first thing you do when you get to the island is go to a grocery store. They have avocados the size of my handbag there. You can eat them for breakfast, or lunch with cottage cheese and paprika. Because let me tell you, there is not one restaurant on that island you are going to enjoy.”

Step 3, by ten-thirty, get back from Four Noodles and go to bed at Arnie’s.

Step 4, at seven o’clock Friday morning, the cab comes to take us to JFK.

Step 5, by Friday at noon we are with my parents in San Jose, so that they can meet the man who fathered my cat.

Step 6, early Saturday morning, we leave San Jose for Hawaii, where neither of us has ever been.

Step 7, by Saturday at two o’clock we are on the Big Island, for Valentine’s week.

Notice that there is no step that involves me making bail for Arnie. But the point is, Step Negative One was to go to Soho to purchase a linen top and sunglasses and sandals. And nice soap, because who knows what will be in our condo on the island. And at five P.M., Step Zero was to get into a cab and get home and get packed. But instead this German woman is stealing my cab and closing the door on me, and so I’m screaming at her:

“You fucking cunt!”

Which is when I realize what the German woman is doing. She isn’t closing the taxi’s door on me, she’s pulling it in so that I can squeeze past the puddles and climb into the cab too. And what she says to me, from in the cab, with her Marlene Dietrich accent, is:

“I thought that we share the taxi, if you go uptown.”

Human kindness. She wants to split the cab. I am mortifi ed, because I just called her a fucking cunt. But what am I going to do? I get in the cab.

It’s an Israeli cabbie, or maybe he’s Russian. He’s sort of eyeing us, like, Who are these two nut cases? And, okay. Normally, when you sit down in a cab in winter and get out of the snow and into the heat, it’s like … taking a trip to Hawaii. A hot, mobile island. But in this cab? You sit down, and what you experience, before you even feel the heat, is the driver’s cologne. So heavy, you feel like it will give you a rash. Which is in addition to the rash I’m already getting just from the tension with the crazy German woman. Anyway, I tell the driver Lexington and 83rd. And the crazy German tells him she’s going to 65th at 3rd Avenue. Like, directly on the way, if we go through the park. How convenient, right? What a coincidence, right? And the cabdriver says: “I take 8th Avenue, is faster on West Side.”

So, 8th Avenue in a sleet storm. The cabbie is muttering to himself, but fine. The crazy German woman is eating her muffin and sitting there all prettily, like I didn’t just call her a fucking cunt. And just as I am getting ready to apologize to her, my cell phone starts ringing again. The call is from some unknown number, but it’s Arnie. So I’m like:

“Hey, baby! Where are you calling from?” And he says:

“Ah … a precinct house.”

“Oh no! What happened? Did you get mugged?” He’s offended:

“Me? Mugged? No, Jennica, listen, I’ve been arrefff.”

Because 8th Avenue has the worst reception for my phone. So I tell him:

“What? I’m not getting reception.”

The German woman? Cringing. The smelly cabbie? Cringing. Because of course I am being shrill. Of course they are thinking that I am one of those women. But Arnie is like:

“Fff arrested, and I need you to call David Fowler.”

“Arrested? For what?”

“Fff!”

“What?”

“Mff!”

“Murder?”

And the smelly cabdriver and the crazy German woman both cringe, in a different way. Because now they aren’t sure if I’m one of those women or if I’m a spoiled Mafi a moll.

“But Arnie? Who are they saying you … ?” And he’s like:

“Allegedly, Jennica, allegedly. Fff! Fff!”

“Arnie, I can’t hear a word.”

Which is awful. It’s like, is he all right? Is he getting out? Am I supposed to call Gran Rose and make bail? Am I supposed to call the airline and cancel everything? A minute before I had been worrying about, like, How do I apologize to the crazy German woman? Should I really have spent seventy dollars on that white linen top? Did I remember to give Julie the key so that she could feed the cat? Some worries are a privilege. And all Arnie is saying is: “Call David Fowler! Call David Fowler!” And, David Fowler? He’s a terrible lawyer. Look what happened the last time Arnie went to him. And that was only money, not, like, murder. I tell him:

“Arnie! I don’t want to call David Fowler. Let me call Gran Rose. She probably knows somebody who can …” But he says, totally clear:

“Do not you dare call Gran Rose! Call David Fowler!”

And at this point the taxi’s pretty much at Times Square. I realize I have to get out of the cab; I have to get to a ground line; I have to figure out David Fowler’s number; but mostly, I have to get out of this cab. So I say:

“Driver, I need to get out here, there’s been a change of plans. Arnie, if I’m going to deal, I have to get to a better phone. Tell me exactly where you are.” And he says:

“They say they’re taking me to … the tombs.” Totally creepy.

While he’s saying this, I’m splashing back out onto the sidewalk where the cab dropped me. Outside, everywhere, it’s sleet, and, just, cataracts of ice. But already I’ve spotted the hotel I’m going to make a dash for, and I’m strategizing how to deal with the concierge, what to tell him so he’ll let me use a ground line. And the cabbie is saying:

“Is okay, you two figure out money, is okay.”

I’ve got bags everywhere. I’m dripping all over the seat. But the meter is at almost eight dollars, so I give the crazy German woman a five. Because it’s either that or a twenty. And, totally blasé, she’s like:

“Ja, fine.”

Oh, and as I close the door, I tell her:

“I am … totally sorry that I called you a fucking cunt.” I meant to apologize to her, and that’s what came out. So embarrassing. And when I get my cell back out of my pocket, I realize that I managed to hang up on Arnie.

Right?

So I’m clopping across the sidewalk, sopping wet, sleet running down my neck, trying to make it into a hotel lobby where I can borrow a ground line to call David Fowler, when I hear the cabbie, from up 8th Avenue:

“You are a fucking cunt!”

I turn around, and there’s the crazy German woman, half a block up, on the sidewalk. Like, she decided to get out of the cab too, except she’s making a dash for the subway station. And the cabbie is standing there in the sleet with his flashers on, watching her and calling her a cunt.

She jumped the fare. The crazy German woman jumped the fare.

So I run half a block up, through the sleet, to pay the driver, because, whatever, it’s what you do. The crazy German woman hadn’t even given him my five. And while he’s making change for my twenty, he tells me:

“This is why she wanted to get out on 65th. She was going to let you pay for her. She is very smart. But you? Coming back and paying me when you were already out of the car? Not so very smart.”

Like, thanks. Did I mention that you smell? But anyway, what I want to know is: Who was that woman?

ANA KAGANOVA, safe in the Berkshires and inspired with a fraudulent scheme, decides how to conscript her husband into her plot (September 12, 2001):

Like every American, I sat yesterday on the sofa and watched CNN. Yeah, eventually people called my cell phone, but my instinct was not to answer. Perhaps I liked the idea that they did not know whether I was alive. I left Monday for the country without saying goodbye, which is what I do when I stay at my husband’s grandmother’s cabin.

All day yesterday I thought, Nobody knows that I was not on the ninety-fi rst floor. But, weiß’ du, at the same time I thought, Nobody knows that I had any reason to be on the ninety-first floor. This is the lay of the land.

In the end I turned off the television, because it is always the same thing that they are playing, and I turned on AM radio. The callers all wanted to know, “Where can I send money?” These rednecks in Massachusetts call AM radio to ask other people what to do with their money.

This is when I realized that these people who were in the towers would be rich. There will be millions of dollars of charity, and there will be millions of dollars of lawsuits, and there will be millions of dollars of reparations, and anyone who was in the towers when they fell will be now rich.

You see who I thought I should in such a circumstance perhaps contact? In order that someone should report me missing? After all, Gogi is my husband. He should report that I am missing, and this is all there is to it.

I went outside, and I had a cigarette, and I threw my cell phone into his grandmother’s pond. Because if I was going to pretend that I was on the ninety-first floor, I would need to destroy my cell phone, without a clue. And yeah, have you ever thrown a cell phone into a pond? In September, the pond is nothing but lilies. The cell phone landed on a lily, and it floated. And I thought, This is my shit luck, the floating cell phone from Finland. Why are the Finns making cell phones that float? I thought, Perhaps there is a kayak? And I can drown this cell phone by hand? But then it sank finally into the pond.

And then I drove half an hour to a pay phone and bought one of these calling cards. I spoke with myself for a minute, in order to get the accent correct, and then I called my husband to tell him that his wife is dead.

And this is

THE SECOND PART.

It is longer, and consists nearly exclusively of statements made during the summer of 2000. However, the dead and the inanimate also have their say in this part, and there are press clippings. Please note that despite interruptions and digressions, eventually everybody comes to their point. A list of the speakers in this comedy, should you like one, appears at the back of the book, after the Fifth Part, on page 293.

MAYNARD GOGARTY tells us what happened on the subway and dissects a dilemma (early August 2000):

There was a woman with beauty spots, and a misunderstanding with the authorities—all on a Lexington Avenue local, uptown. She was one of these women who strike your heart and leave it resounding, like a bell. It’s a simple story. But may I give a preface, a brief preface, and then we can discuss what I did wrong?

A preface:

You step onto the subway, the subways constituting a borough unto themselves, with different hostilities and different hopes, a whole mobile county of curiosities, and—there she is! This creature with angelic blood, and a cup of iced coffee, and the scent of some recherché shampoo, and her smile just so. Her halo quivering every time the subway rattles. And you must decide what to do. Do you say something, or do you say nothing?

Dignity would seem—dilemmatically, to require both and yet to permit neither.

The subway is, after all, one of the most dignified places to open an affair. Love should contain a constituent element of irreducible destiny, and destiny is exactly what is lacking when—. When Battery Park businessmen ransom dates with chesty socialites from commercial matchmakers in midtown. Or, or when idle and gelatinous West Side freelancers, suctioned to coffee-shop tables like sea anemones, filter through the classifieds in the Village Voice for ads reading “Woman seeks Manly Polyp.” And destiny is what is lacking when, after months of inhaling one another’s dander, the mustard-breathed attorney commences his case, his lascivious case, against his homely, hot-doggy paralegal. Or, or when the bag boy at Gristedes propositions the Gristedes cashier. Love should not be the spoils of a deliberate campaign or the convenient alliance of a war of attrition. Love should be an instant and supernatural uproar in the soul. It should be the resounding of a bell.

So on the subway, with a beautiful girl, dignity demands action and condemns silence. Because—when the girl with the halo sits down across the aisle from you, it is your one chance for truest love!

However, and contrariwise, subways or no, dignity demands that we, as rational apes, reject delusions, including comforting delusions, in favor of the truth. And it is a comforting delusion to think that every time a beautiful woman sits down across from you on the subway, destiny is trying to bring you happiness. Destiny does not manifest itself in the form of chance encounters with beautiful women. Destiny manifests itself, always, in the form of hobbyhorses, pet phrases, pet cats, nose-picking, and credit card debt. And Sunday crosswords, and the pursuit of “fun.” In other words, your destiny has been riding across from you on the subway for much, much longer than you can ever imagine. Beautiful strangers do not each represent a new form of happiness. Beautiful strangers are like everybody else—dull, demanding, violent, and malodorous.

So when a beautiful woman sits across the aisle, dignity condemns action and demands silence. Because—when you fail to say hello to a beautiful stranger on the subway, you have triumphantly avoided yet another form of—human misery.

To say something, or to say nothing? This is the anatomy of the dilemma presented by love and dignity on the subway, and this concludes the preface.

I was on an uptown local on the Lexington Avenue line, a subway that was doomed to stall at 33rd Street.

I had boarded at the City Hall stop, still woozy from a breakfast meeting with the woman who wants to buy the rights to my movie, and I was taking the contract uptown, to my attorney. It was my quadrennial half-pint of success. I was in media res in the worst way, running an errand for my meager movie on a wet furnace of a morning. My armpits were—have you ever used a droplet of water to test the heat of a wok? While I was waiting on the platform for the train at City Hall, my armpits were informing me that the wok was ready. The woman next to me on the platform at City Hall was wearing a yellow muumuu and carrying a Bible and a blue-ice freezer pack. Bible shut, freezer pack against her chest. Fundamentalist heat, this.

The subway was empty, naturally, when it finally rolled in, since City Hall is the first stop on the line. But I didn’t take a seat. I took off my jacket, draped it over my—moist shirtsleeve, and stood like a jack under the air conditioner, to expose myself to as much as possible of that good dry air. Though I did leave my boater on my head, to protect my scalp.

So! The subway leaves City Hall. And as it makes each stop, the doors open, the beastly day seethes into the train, the doors close, and cool order returns. By Spring Street the woman in the muumuu has cooled off enough to start reading her Bible, and I extract my handkerchief and begin to mop myself up, when I notice—a crucial detail. At the far end of the subway car, the alarm for the emergency brake is sounding.

But I do nothing about it—yet.

Spring Street, Bleecker Street, Astor Place. Our train arrives at Union Square simultaneously with an express train. Fatefully, I decide against doing that bounce across the platform to catch the faster train. I am too hot, and am in no hurry. My lawyer can wait. The fundamentalist in the muumuu leaves, however, thumps away to catch the express, and into our car, from the express train, slips—the woman with the beauty spots. A shapely twist of a woman, dressed in black, with two beauty spots on her right cheek. The doors shut. She sits down at the other end of the car, directly underneath the colicky emergency brake.

Twenty-third Street. Twenty-eighth Street. Shadows and stiff air. The beautiful woman’s halo is vibrating in time to the trill of the emergency brake siren. Thirty-third Street. And just note the pointlessness of the place and time. Thirty-third Street? Ten twenty-five A.M.? In the midst of a primordial heat wave? At 10:25 A.M., 33rd Street—is harrowingly bland. It is nowhere.

But—33rd Street. The train pulls up to the platform, but the doors don’t open. And then, as was foreordained, the train stalls. The electricity weakens and dies, the lights dwindle and quit, the air conditioning expires. We, the passengers, are experiencing the subway as it was in the age of reptiles. The only things still functioning are the alarm on the emergency brake and the public address system, the latter of which the conductor is using to scold us. She is accusing someone of having pulled the emergency brake. “This train is going to be held in the station.” Apparently she is planning to go car to car, looking for the culprit.

Now, you can tell a lot from this conductor’s voice. She is black, young, and calm, but not necessarily always calm—you can hear the potential for impressive intemperance. “People, listen up. We have a brake situation, so you are going to have to be patient. Be patient, please.”

So we sit there and, without the air conditioning, commence to sweat, and we listen, in the darkness, to the whine of the emergency brake. Outside, growing restless, are all the damned souls on the platform at 33rd Street, waiting to get into the train, waiting to be pardoned and released into the cool interior of the 6 train, or rather, the ever-less-cool interior of the 6 train.

The woman with the beauty spots is sipping an iced coffee, at peace in her seat. She is wearing leather sandals, but her feet are enchantedly clean for someone who has been walking about Manhattan in weather hot enough to sublimate the concrete. Her hair is thick and wavy and blackish, pulled back under a knotted white handkerchief, a pristine handkerchief. Eyes closed, soft features, and two beauty marks on her right cheek. Maybe she is Spanish, or maybe Jewish. A sleeveless black shirt made out of something elastic-y, stained in the faintest half-moons of perspiration, right along the bottom of the armholes, which is very sexy, and billowy black linen pants. Sipping her iced coffee through a straw. No milk; she’s drinking it black. And the condensation is dripping onto her hands. She’s got a napkin, a bundle of paper napkins, that she’s using to mop the condensation from the side of her plastic iced-coffee cup and that she’s then holding against her forehead, so she can feel the coolness. Freckles on her shoulders.

Her seat is at the other end of the car, directly under the noisy emergency brake. And I—I see my opportunity. All I need is one teaspoon of courage, in order to do her the dignifi ed courtesy of shutting off that alarm.

JAMES CLEVELAND, age twelve, describes what Maynard looked like under the air-conditioning vent on the uptown No. 6 train (early August 2000):

He was just some tall white guy dressed like an old man. Except he wasn’t old, as in old-old. But he had on old-man clothes, like one of those brown checkered jackets that looks like a tablecloth, and a white straw hat with a brown stripe around it, and a red tie with one of those silver clips to hold it to the shirt. He looked like the geezer who sits all on his own at church and who thinks he behaves better than everyone else and who stares at you and your sister to let you know it. And that was the thing with this white guy—he had a face like he was surprised at something. And when he raised his eyebrows, he had about five hundred and fifty-five wrinkles on his forehead. You know how they add extra lines in music for the high notes? His forehead was like music that has all kinds of notes that are going way, way, way too high.

Chief was like, “Son, he look like he just step in something nasty, son.”

And I said, “Son, you be saying son far too much, son.”

And Chief said, “Your mother be saying it too much. He got a face like something cold just touch his balls.”

But the point being is, ain’t nobody going to pay attention to you unless you make a problem for them. And Brittany and Juney and Shawna were trying to make a problem for the white guy, to see if Chief and me were scared enough to run away. So they got the guy’s attention, and then they flipped him off. And I think the reason they picked him was because of his face.

MAYNARD GOGARTY continues undeterred with the story of what happened on the uptown No. 6 train (early August 2000):

So, now, out on the platform, waiting to get in, are five black kids, two boys and three girls, twelve or thirteen years old, and they are waving at me through the window. Or at least the girls are waving. Only twelve-year-olds could muster such brio in such heat. These three girls are absolutely—conjubilant. And bear in mind, these kids are perfectly the age to do something simultaneously adolescent and childish: go on a double date, yet wave at strangers on the other side of the glass. They have the look of cutting class—some infinitely tedious summer band camp, perhaps, since the boys have trumpet cases with them. They feel daring for skipping class, for being on a date, and so the girls are giving themselves courage and teasing their young escorts by waving at me. Well—! Naturally I wave back. Naturally I wipe my sweaty brow and wave back.

Which is when the girls show me—their ring fingers. If a twelve-year-old black girl shows you her middle fi nger, you know what it means; but what does it mean if she shows you—her ring finger? So, after a brief moment of racial disharmony in America, the three girls run away, up the platform, laughing. Their escorts watch them vacantly and then look at me vacantly. If you spend enough time as a teacher, especially if you are as subtle a disciplinarian as I am, then you develop a certain indifference to these things. I can see that the boys’ opinion of the three girls isn’t much higher than my own—and then I realize I have accumulated one teaspoon of romantic courage. So I put on my jacket, pick up my attaché, and stride down the subway car toward the woman with the beauty spots, determined to silence that jeering alarm.