Monday, August 13, 2012

Good Old What's Her Name

At the invisible gates where my block meets the avenue sits a sentry.

African-American woman, not quite elderly, pear-shaped.  When I approach she's always in profile, at her post, wreathed in smoke.  A vigil through burning tobacco.  This neighborhood is shrill with the crashing music of alarms and sirens and shouts, but she's as serene as a Japanese garden.  I wonder what she sees that I don't. 

She favors the shade. Her perch from a wheeled walker travels to three spots with the arcing of the sun.  One of them, a grimy brick doorway, in case of rain.  She only ever occupies the north side of street.  She's seen the south side opposite, just a few feet of cratered asphalt away, and must have found it lacking.  That, or her suspension is out. Still that endless chain of cigarillos have to come from somewhere. So she's got to travel, even if only a hundred yards or so in any of four directions to a bodega.

And the cigarillos sustain. Her forearms live cemented along the crossbar, her hands wilt down in the center like crumpled fruit. But then her hand animates, set apart from the rest of her, winched up from the elbow to bring the moistened end to lips, dead on schedule.  I've never known her without that slim papyrus tube slanted through her fingers.  I've never known her to need to light one and only ever see the dirty blue tendrils twirl up into nothing. 

I've never known her every single day for three years.

I don't know her name. As a private game, after walking past I'd try to think of a few that would suit her. I wondered if any that leaped to mind might be the real thing. I could see her each day for a century and never know her name, I was somehow certain of that.

East Harlem, even by New York standards, is a transitory place.

Still a recurring face yields a small nod. An earned one. Maybe. A long maybe. Mid-stride, maybe the nod graduates to a 'how are you' that lacks a question mark at the end of it. I wish I could recall how our talks began. I don't, though. If I tried it would be an invention and accurate only in spirit. I'd be the only one to know that, but it would bother me.

Once I was honest about it, I realized I was looking for her. If she hadn't been there I'd have been disappointed. Where the hell did that come from? It suddenly felt more stupid to keep my mouth shut. She was there, in the distance, in hazy silhouette. So I stopped and meant it when I asked how she was. People can sniff out the question mark.

We became sort of somebodies who once were nobodies. Foolish not to, really. Especially in transitory places.

Mostly I see her in the early afternoon when I walk to the gym or for groceries, so it's a lively scene on the sidewalk. Her walker is purple and a little scraped, baring the metal beneath but sturdy, with black wheels and grips. There's often some purple in her loose and modest clothes, sometimes just a few dots lost in the mix. Her hair is swept back into a small, tight and shiny ponytail. It is jet black but rimming her temples are wide arrows of ash grey. I rarely see her standing, but now and then catch her during the inching arc of the shade. Her walk is plodding but regular and stooped over the bars of the walker her meaty arms jostle with the uneven pavement. Once she sits, she settles into a posture that seems inevitable and solid, like a outcropping of rock.

Her face is without creases and usually gleaming from long hours outside. Her eyes are lightly lashed. Guesses at her age would be mostly wrong. She wears no make-up and the occasional piece of pharmacy jewelry. The mouth is wide and shaped like a fat lemon wedge lying on the rind. The yellowed teeth have gaps between each in front and make for an unreserved grin that melts the heart with its candor. I've seen ruler-straight smiles, pearly magazine smiles, that were far less pretty. At least, less lived-in.

Her expression is most often firmly geared in neutral. Her eyes can be hazel granite, just hard. Neither hot or cold. Unconcerned, flat. But that's before she sees you. It makes me happy that when I appear, she shifts hard into instant cheer.

"Hey dahlin', how're YEW doin'?  Yew goin' to the gym?  Where've yew been a few days now?  What's new with yew, everythin' good?"

The voice is broad and flat and the vowels pressed hard through the upper palate and nose, what actors call 'the mask'.  The tone is burnished from a lifetime of tobacco.  And if I lived on Sesame Street, today's episode would be brought to you by the letter 'W'.

I put my hands in my pockets and lean against a tree.  We cover only the easiest and slipperiest topics, nothing ever gets gummed up in our talk, it's all sweet and surface and fast.  The talk couldn't matter less.  It's the talking.  A comfort to us both, I think.  Not for long, just for then, and that's fine.

And I still don't know her name.

As the months go by it starts to fascinate me that I don't.  A year later and I begin thinking I don't want to know it.

I try piecing together her story from her speech: it's not Southern or Midwestern, the vowels and tempo are wrong.  She forms words in a sentence in measured chomps, like huge bites of food carefully chewed.  But that could be her, and not a piece of the puzzle.  I keep figuring that Northeast is likely.  Those W's surgically grafted onto every word are familiar enough to me from Jersey (ie: 'cawwwffee', 'cawwwll me later', 'this is my dawwwghter, Lawwwren'.)

Her sense of humor doesn't lend any clues either.  Northeastern humor is more nakedly caustic, while Southern or Midwestern feigns politeness but is just as barbed under all that sugary frosting.  But her humor has no pointed edge, it's as mild as the rest of her.  A simple delight that a give and take is underway, and no thought of upper hands or turns of phrase.

And I still don't know her name.

Now and then I see her at night.  Early morning, while I'm walking back from the subway after gigs, so it's about one or two.  The streetlamps drench everything with a clotted orange light.  I hate it.  It doesn't illuminate.  It makes everything look grimy and the shadows thicker.  There's a too-rapid heartbeat bass line from a parked car or a second story apartment and I hope like hell it isn't near my bedroom window.  I round the corner and she's there.

Shade isn't a factor then, so she sets up her vigil atop the handicap ramp in front of her building.  From there she has an elevated view of the occasional patrol car or somebody walking their unsnipped pitbull on a heavy chain or a some vain idiot drifting by with a briefcase and his tie yanked away from his neck.  (Here's a hint: I'm not a cop and I don't own a dog.)

"Hey, dahlin', yew just gettin' back from work?  Late.  What do yew do, comin' back this late?"

I tell her half the story, that I'm a pianist and work at night.

"Oh that's nice!  Real nice.  What kind of music do yew play?"

I tell her jazz mostly and that it keeps me busy.  She must see that I'm drooping like a balloon with a slow leak.

"And that's how yew make your livin'?"

I smile and tell her I wouldn't call it a living, but it does keep me alive.

Her laugh drops her chin and leaves her mouth hanging open as a series of 'ha's' is shot through her nose like a machine gun with a slow rate of fire.

I smile bigger now because I'm punchy and she's unguarded and my life is an improbable place.

"So let me ask yew somethin'.  How come yew ain't got no girl?"

The slow leak of the balloon plugs up and I snap to.

"I see yew everyday and I always think, 'this boy is so nice, ain't that a shame he's got no girl'.  I only ever see yew walkin' by yourself."

The stock answer comes too easily, so I tailor it on its way out.  That I spend a lot of time around a lot of strangers so I like being by myself, but that I'm working on the rest and have been on a few dates.

"Aww that's nice.  Yew should.  She got a good heart?"

That's two unseen twists.  I enjoy it.  So I answer that it's too soon to tell.  You never know.

"Awlright.  That's real important, yew know.  Nothin' more important than THAT!  'Cause I think yew gotta good heart too."

I'm unsure she can see my face but I smile for her benefit anyway.  I thank her and say that I need to go to bed but am glad she was outside.  I want to personalize that, but I still can't.  I keep suspecting I never will and don't know why.

"Good to see you too, dahlin'.  Get some sleep.  See you tomorrow."

It's a safe bet.

Then last Thursday.  A thick August noon, and the sky was dirty wool.  To look at it somehow made you squint more than a postcard sunny day.  So instead you hang your head and push through the bathwater like everybody else.

I'd gone down the front steps and could peer off and see her there.  I realized that in two years I'd never walked the other way, when that avenue is much closer.  I always took the longer way.  Why change now?  Well, there would be one change.

She saw me early on and waved with her cigarillo hand and drew vanishing streaks in the air.  Seated next to her was a young Latina unknown to me.  Fairly pretty, if awkward.  She smiled but kept hiding behind the hand that held up her chin.  Either that or her wisdom teeth hurt.

"This is Angela, my aide.  Angela, this is who I was talkin' about.  My friend that passes by."

It was a title I could more than live with, wear with some pride.  Fondness in the transitory place.

"Ain't he handsome?  Told yew.  And that silver hair.  That's nice, don't yew think?  Used to have it longer, got so curly.  That's good luck, yew know.  Silver hair."

I didn't, and said so and was glad to hear it.

"Oh yeah.  Yew'll be lucky.  Besides, even if it ain't lucky, it looks good.  Yew'll have no problem."

I pushed on and grinned as I asked where she was from.

"Awlbany.  Originally, up there.  Yeah.  Awlbany."

What brought her here?  Angela shifted in her seat to listen.

"Well, yew know, it used to be nice, but went bad.  People bringin' knives and guns to clubs and that makes everything go bad.  I never went to those places, but I heard about it.  I lost the place where I was livin'.  So I applied for assistance and they bounced me 'round a bunch of places, then two years ago, I ended up here."

We had both moved to the block at the same time.  I'd pegged her as a fixture like a colonial lighthouse.

Then I felt a little shame.  Her building had seemed like a shelter of some kind, but I never wanted to find out more.  I scarcely know more than that now but still my lack of curiosity made me squirm some.

"I'm applyin' for my new place now though.  So we'll see.  Should be good.  Hope I'm lucky."

I folded my arms and laughed and told her that after all she does have silver hair.

Angela giggled from behind her hiding hand.  From the other, the slow-fire machine gun laugh as she tilted her head back.

"Right, " she chuckled, the smile pulling her cheeks out and narrowing but not dimming her eyes.  The automatic hand raised the cigarillo for a gentle drag.

And then I stuck my hand out and told her my name was Eric.  She reached over and placed a thin palm with a lot of give into my own.

"Eric.  I can remember that, that's easy.  Eric."

Then nothing.

There was a pause shorter than it felt.  I pressed.  Asked what I should call her.

"Randolph."

Now a pause that felt double as long than it was.

I stammered, tried to detect a joke.  Repeated it to her.  Then again.

"Yup.  Randolph.  That's what yew can cawll me.  That's what everybody cawlls me."

Alright, I said, Randolph, now three times I've said it out loud, an incantation, for Christ's sake.  I asked if that was really her first name.

"No.  Yew asked what yew could cawll me.  I said 'Randolph', yew can cawll me that.  It's my last name."

I began to get it.  I asked if anyone knew her first name but already suspected.

"No.  I don't tell people that.  Nobody ever pronounces it right, and I hate that.  I don't tell it.  Nobody knows it but me."

I shook her hand and called her by her name that wasn't.  I asked if she'd still be there when I got back.  She exhaled and the blue spools of smoke knotted the air around her and she squinted a little.

"Probably not.  I've gotta go back to my room to freshen up and change before I come back down later.  But yew'll see me."

I told her that it was a deal, and crossed the street without my answer and was delighted.  I know as much as I need to know.  She's Randolph and I'm her friend that passes by.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

I, The Harry

Harry must have been the sweet and ever-smiling type, his thoughts his own but Ovaltine mild.  No.  You have to stir Ovaltine, and I doubt Harry was ever stirred.  Hard-working and unhurried and shy around ladies, all the well-scrubbed virtues of the lonely midlife bachelor.  Harry must have gleamed with them.  The sort of man a widow or maiden aunt invites over for an early dinner but still feels safe and knows the neighbors won't talk.  That must have been Harry.  But when I was about five or six, I preferred to think of Harry as flint-eyed killer.

My grandparents were only in their early sixties then and still in the large house where they'd raised their daughters. Their youngest was wrapping college when I sprang on the scene to be fed, quieted and kept away from open flames.  They became second parents to me just at the beginning of their retirements.  Vital enough to discipline, mellow enough to love as only grandparents can.  I was too fortunate by half.  Next door to them lived my great-grandparents.  My own house was one street over, where the other set of great-grandparents lived on the floor beneath me.  All off the boat Italians, save one.  Those that were off the boat had disembarked seventy years earlier but their accents were as fresh as if it were yesterday, or as if Chico Marx gave elocution lessons.  Anyway, I had two homes.

But Harry was there and was not of us.  He was a tenant.  Harry lived on the second floor apartment in the back of my grandparents' home, accessible from an exposed wooden staircase painted white.  He was always there, even when unseen, but not of us.  I couldn't figure it.  I hated it.  He scared the shit out of me.  He fascinated the shit out of me.

It was simple.  They should have known better.  They never should have answered me when I asked what Harry did for a living. 

"He drives a school bus."

"No he doesn't."

"Yes, he does.  He drives a school bus."

"He doesn't drive mine."

"There are other buses going to other schools than yours, Eric."

"..."

"Oh yeah, but then I think when he's not a bus driver, Harry is a private detective."

Bomb blast.  In my brain.

I got sent outside "for air".

The backyard wasn't that sprawling and the grass uneven.  There was a creaky tool shed and a very tall tree with a tire swing.  Plenty of ambient scenery for whatever leaped to mind.  But any make-believe setting I could graft onto that backyard,  those were all cardboard embarrassments.  Harmless enough in passing the time, but they were still flimsy and once caught you froze in that mortified way of children whose imagined places have just melted like spun sugar.

But those stairs, those exposed wooden stairs painted white.  They had a fresh menace.  No convenient third-act wrap up of a tv show here.  This was leaner, uncertain, real.  People got hurt, on purpose, that's who he dealt with.  Nothing thrilling about that.  Except it was.  A private detective.  A real one.  Those stairs climbed to... well, who knew?  Harry was an intruder whose presence was tolerated by everyone but me.  That was bad enough.  He had been plastic knife at a nice dinner.  Now he was a switchblade. 

And then the day when he he appeared at the top of the stairs, locked his door and started coming down.  That day, Harry wore a hat.  A fedora, snap brim not porkpie.  Harry came down the white stairs with care, maybe a little gently at the knees and forearms doing the awkward hinge swing around his gut.  I was rooted to the spot, dead center of the backyard.  I didn't blink.  Without pulling my eyes off Harry and his hat I knew I was too far from any cover.  Sitting duck.  My stomach hollowed out.

That's what I remember.  What I wish now is that I'd been a different sort of boy.  One in whom fear meant forward.  I never spoke to Harry, not once, ever, and certainly not that day with the snap brim fedora.  I turned on my heels and ran like hell.  I hid behind the tire swing tree.  The tree was cover, but cover means you can peek from safety and if Harry wore his hat, that meant shit was about to get real.  Bad guys, a concealed .45, beautiful women who burst from their clothes while motionless.

My right hand reached out and laid on the bark while I eased myself out just the width of one eye.  Harry's Florsheims made even thuds on the plank steps.  When he landed at the paved path, I studied him.  It was a bulky suit, nearly black or murky brown, and the snap brim hat much lighter.  A hat he wore with several suits, or the two he owned.  He had a happy, earned sort of gut so I doubted he could move that quickly but it lived on him well.

Harry's face surprised me.  Pink, almost scalded pink, as if he'd just had an old-fashioned shave and they finished with a hot towel, or he fell asleep in the sun.  What I could see of his hair was chalk white and trimmed at the sides and back with the tell-tale exactitude of the barbershop.  I couldn't see his eyes, only the fleshy squints, but they seemed tame.  His face was full and round and uncomplicated.  There was a light smile sloped across it as he turned.  I guess if every time you step out of your apartment there's a kid who bolts in terror to watch you from behind a tree, you learn to find the humor in it.  Or maybe he was smiling at something else.

Harry shuffled along the path and hooked a right down the driveway, and that's all I remember of him.  I wondered at the time if he'd seen me, hoping he had, hoping like hell he hadn't, expecting he must have or he was a lousy detective and would get shot on a case in no time.  I looked for the shape of a gun under the suit jacket and found none, but expected I just didn't know the secrets of the trade.  More than anything I wanted to know where Harry was off to.  He never wore the hat to drive school buses, that I knew.  Who had hired him?  Was he scared?  Did he ever leave thinking he wouldn't come back?

When I imagine now where he went that day, the scene is different: Mid-afternoon, a weekday, the sun is still high and hot and streets mostly empty.  The bar and grill is dim and a little damp with horizontal blinds mostly shut and the game on in the corner but just a murmur and there are only one or two other grey half-moon faces hovering over a Daily News.  Harry gets cozy over a couple Miller High Life's, in a glass not a can, and the foam on his lip he wipes off with the back of his hand.  He doesn't smoke, makes him cough.  There's a jukebox but who cares.  There's a pool table that's lit up so the dust shows, flecking the air.  It smells of weak beer and yesterday's Camels and the quiet fading of men.  There's a bartender who's used to the long hours, never gets antsy or need to chat.  I think of Harry as someone who wanted to be around others but be left alone.

I also think that Harry only ever wore the hat when it was time to be a private detective.  Being a school bus driver must have made him his regular money, but the detective gig?  He wore the costume.  He had that little smirk.

I think Harry and I shared a knack for hiding and watching people, then for telling ourselves stories that were more fun than what was really there.