If I Forget You BY Thomas Christopher Greene
For my siblings:
Stephen, Kathryn, Maura, Richard, David, and Daniel
Hey, buddy, just write something everyone wants to read, will ya?
—CAPTAIN KEVIN O’CONNOR, QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS, FIRE DEPARTMENT
Two roads diverge in a wood, and we took the one more traveled by.
—HENRY GOLD, APPROPRIATING FROST
Henry, 2012
On the kind of beautiful spring day where no one expects anything of significance to happen, Henry Gold, a poet who teaches at NYU, finishes class and decides to do something he has not done in years: walk a good length of the city to his apartment. Normally he hops on the A train at West Fourth Street and arrives within a few blocks of his house. Today he is feeling inspired, as if he has not seen the sun shining in a while, though that can’t be true, can it? Hasn’t it been a magnificent spring?
At forty-two years of age, Henry Gold is not a famous poet by any stretch, though he won a few awards in his youth and this translated into a teaching career. He has been in The New Yorker twice, though not for about ten years. What he is, is a fine teacher. He has an ear for other’s work that he doesn’t have for his own. He is able to discern a musicality that certain students possess and is able to nudge them in the right direction, for he believes that is all a teacher of writing is really ever able to do.
Henry walks through Union Square Park and then up Fifth Avenue. All around him is the madness of the city, and he sees it today with fresh eyes, like someone who is just visiting here must. Everywhere he looks, he sees something that makes him smile. Even the insanity of midtown, people moving like schools of fish, then stopping all at once and standing in one giant breathing group, doesn’t annoy him as it usually might.
Through a V of lesser buildings, Henry spies the Chrysler to the east, his favorite New York landmark. The sun has been arrested in its spire, a kaleidoscope of spun gold.
The day is warm, and as Henry walks, he removes his suit jacket and hangs it over one arm. Passing a playground, he sees a woman dressed in black scolding a small curly-haired child, and Henry cannot help remembering his own mother, his fiery and emotional mother, whose coal black eyes burned hot when she was angry. He remembers his West End of Providence neighborhood, where he was the only Jewish kid. His mother once racing outside in her thick black dress and pinning an Italian bully to the ground, her knees on his biceps, her hands slapping his face and asking him how he liked it. He remembers all his constant embarrassment and how he ran from all of it. Nights when as a child he lay in bed and wished he wasn’t a Jew and asked himself why they just couldn’t be normal and be Catholics like the other families. Henry recalls his mother saying to him, “Henry Gold, don’t ever let anyone tell you can’t do something.” Her words haunt him, for it is the great failing of his life. Many years ago, someone told him how to do things, and he didn’t fight like he should have.
Henry shakes his head. He doesn’t want to think about this.
He moves through the crowds on Fifth before the park, the shoppers with their oversize bags in each hand, people spilling out of stores with ornate window treatments, the heart of commerce in the heart of the most important city of the time.
Soon the city opens up once again. Here now is the park, Olmsted’s great monument to smart planning: an emerald island in the middle of the concrete one. It is bustling, too, of course, the hustlers and the horses and the pedis all lined up to take advantage of a sunny day. Tourists having their photo taken with the guy dressed as the Statute of Liberty. Henry stops for a moment and studies a chestnut tree in full bloom, golden cones like offerings waiting to be plucked.
Henry has a vague idea about maybe getting a drink. He is feeling bright and wants to be around people. He drifts across Central Park South toward Columbus Circle. There is a wine bar on the third floor of the Time Warner Center that he has been to a few times. It is a good place for someone alone. It is the kind of place where he could sit for hours with a book and a glass of wine.
Yes, this is what he will do. When Henry reaches the plaza in front of the center, for no reason in particular he suddenly stops and turns so his back is to the building. It is just before five o’clock and there is a rush of people. Henry puts his arms up in the air, and it is like standing in the ocean, the waves coming over and then falling back and then coming over him again. This is not a city where people just stand still.
He looks toward the park across the circle and he sees the pigeon. There are thousands of pigeons, but this one is flying right at him with what looks like purpose. Henry smiles. The pigeon is like a missile. The gray bird flies past him, and Henry instinctively turns, and as he watches, the pigeon flies directly into the glass above the revolving doors without braking at all. It bounces off the glass and lands on the ground, to the right of the door. People stream out, unaware of the death in their midst.
Just when Henry thinks he is the only one who has seen this, a woman coming out the door stops. She leans down next to the pigeon, which is on its back. She places her hand on its breast. She is well dressed, a gray suit, hair cut in a bob. As if she senses Henry’s eyes on her, she suddenly looks toward him, and the face Henry sees travels to him from a lifetime ago.
“Margot,” Henry whispers. It is a name he has always loved to say. A name that is sui generis to him, it could belong only to her. He has never known another Margot. It is a name he likes to turn over in his mouth. A tiny poem of a name, how it rises to the g and then falls soft as silk to the silence of the t.