Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk(44)

Alone this time, free from entanglements, I can pay closer attention, see the place for the institution it is and not just for what it means to me. So many ubiquitous dishes were invented here: eggs Benedict, Manhattan clam chowder, chicken á la King, and baked Alaska. The Delmonico’s that served Max and me our final meal together, Oscar’s Delmonico’s, closed in 1977, but the restaurant reopened under new management in 1981. The posted menu appears to include all the classics.

Not that it matters. I’m getting a steak. A make-up steak. A steak to compensate for the spoiling of my last one by the one true love of my entire life.

I place a gloved hand on the brass handle of the wooden door and step inside. Into a crush of people that makes the restaurant lobby resemble a rush-hour subway car.

The harried woman at the hostess stand greets me with shell-shocked solicitude.

“Dinner for one, please,” I say, raising my voice above the clamor.

“Do you have a reservation?”

“Actually,” I say, “I haven’t a reservation. This is a spontaneous undertaking. One last great adventure for 1984.”

“I see,” says the hostess. “I’m afraid we’re quite packed.”

“So I noticed,” I say. “Very good to see such a good business doing good business.”

“Mm-hmm,” she says, eyes down, scanning her list.

Mild dismay—I feel it, for not having thought of this: a popular restaurant on a massive holiday. Of course they’re overrun. But I also feel as though I should be able to talk my way in. I’ve rarely been unable to persuade.

“Surely,” I say, “you might have an out-of-the-way space for an out-of-the-way old lady? A crate or two in the wine cellar, perhaps? It can be tiny. Just big enough to hold a steak.”

“That seems deeply unlikely, ma’am,” she says, theatrically turning the paper over to reveal a back that’s as scrawled with names as the front.

“I had very much hoped—” I say, then pause, brought up short by the complexities of what I had hoped. Clarity! Focus! The keys to any successful appeal! But my message is undercut by all the things I’ve wanted, all the people I’ve been.

“I hate to tell you, ma’am, but it cannot be done,” says the hostess. “We have a wait of three hours at this point, and even then there’s no guarantee.”

“I ate here once before,” I say. “It was terrible. The circumstances were terrible. The food was superb. Or I imagine it was. It’s difficult for me to say. That’s why I’ve come back. I was here with my husband. We’d just divorced. Now he’s dead. This all happened thirty years ago. The divorce, that is. And the dinner. In that case it was lunch, actually.”

The hostess’s face is shading toward desperation; her gaze has grown distant, measuring the crowd as it fills in behind me. One small delay occasioned by a senile woman could breed a calamitous chain reaction on a night like tonight. “Ma’am,” she says, “I’m really very sorry. I hope you’ll visit us again soon.”

I don’t know what else to say—a formerly rare state of affairs, happening these days with increasing frequency. Boxfish in her prime—late twenties, this young woman’s age—would be seated by now, probably drinking on the house. Times have changed. But not times only.

“Well,” I say. “Thank you for trying.”

When I turn, I am facing the face of a woman about Johnny’s age, dark hair with some stately gray at the temples. Her expression says she’s overheard our exchange, witnessed my failure, and I can guess what she’s thinking: I hope I die before I’m old and pathetic. Would that I had, madam! Would that I had.

I feel a rush of heat under the skin of my cheeks, beneath my ridiculous mink, and I turn away, lest these people see me cry. Spoiling everyone’s fun. Behavior I’d expect from Olive, frankly. I work my way back toward the vestibule, stopping for a moment to collect myself, using the glass front of a bookcase to reapply Orange Fire to the mouth of my spectral reflection. Through the front doors, between the twin Pompeiian columns, I can see steam rising from grates and tailpipes in the all-but-unpeopled five-way intersection. I could take a cab back to Grimaldi, I suppose. Or find a hot dog stand. On New Year’s Eve. Somewhere in Lower Manhattan.

A do over. Max’s phrase—a bit vulgar, but charming, like the man himself. Julia was his: Julia who buried him, whom my son will shortly bury in turn. Apparently marriage can be done over, while a steak dinner cannot. And yet steaks are often overdone, which seems like a significant paradox. I have overdone a few in my time, being no master chef. I have overdone any number of things. Don’t overdo it, Ma, Gianino always cautions. But so much of my life was overdoing. Overdoing it at raging dos, quite often. Creating big to-dos, not always on purpose. Doing my best, over and over. Much ado over nothing. In Shakespeare’s day, Helen learned during our brief career as thespians, “nothing” was pronounced the same as “noting,” which, it’s worth noting, vastly increased its punning potential. How sour sweet music is, when time is broke and no proportion kept! With nothing shall I be pleased till I be eased with being nothing.

In what time remains, very little that is broken can be fixed.

A light hand on my shoulder: I barely feel it through my heavy pelt. It’s the dark-haired woman again.