Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk(53)

He doesn’t need to explain or apologize. Now that he’s relaxed, I can see something clearly in his eyes, in the way he’s standing: He’s terrified to be here alone. Scared of what the job makes him do and scared, too, of whatever made him take the job in the first place. All reasonable fears, I suppose.

“Oh, come on, Stu,” I say. “Let an old lady show off. I’m proud as a peacock that I can still remember any of them.”

“All right,” says Stu. “Try me.”

“Okay,” I say, and then recite, “In a moment off duty, a cop Told a motorist, speeding, to stop. Said the arm of the law, / ‘It may stick in your craw—’”

I look at Stu. He looks at me. “Then what?” he says.

“Well, then you write the last line,” I say. “That’s how it worked. That was the contest. Come on, Stu. Go for it.”

Stu shrugs, helpless. “But I need you to take off your top?” he says.

“Well,” I say. “That rhymes.”

“Sorry,” says Stu. “Sorry. Just free-associating.”

“No, no,” I say. “That’s not bad. It wouldn’t have won you any prizes from family newspapers in 1945, but nowadays who knows? One more?”

“Sure,” says Stu, smiling, finally. “I got nowhere else to be.”

“All right,” I say. “A gang of young rockets from Mars / Shot to earth, like exploding cigars, But when they inspected Our World, they elected—”

“To turn and head back to the stars?” says Stu, crinkling his face in concentration.

“Stu, that’s pretty,” I say. “If I were the judge, I’d give you the blue ribbon.”

“Thanks,” he says, tossing his cigarette butt down toward the Hudson. “I better get back to work. Patrol the site and all.”

“Of course,” I say. “Thanks for playing. I should be going, too.”

“Where you headed?”

“I’m going to a party. For New Year’s Eve. Up in Chelsea.”

“And you’re walking?”

“Yes,” I say. “But I’ll be okay.”

“I don’t know if anyone in this city’s going to be okay,” he says. “But if anybody is, Lillian, I got a feeling it’ll be you.”

“Stu, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me on a Hudson River construction site,” I say. “Happy New Year. I’ll shove off now. People are expecting me.”

Not exactly true, not exactly a lie. But a thing it makes him happy to hear, and me happy to say.

I head back the way I came, east on Vesey, toward Church, thinking of planning and cities, of battlements and landfill, and how the solid rock upon which my success was built turned out to be a snow heap and melted, melted.





17

Why People Do Things

On postcards it never rains. Our honeymoon was like a postcard.

On June 20, 1935, Max and I boarded a transatlantic liner bound for Italy.

Lovely day, top sun deck, I wrote in the small travel journal I’d gotten for the trip—a wedding present from Helen McGoldrick and Dwight Zweigert.

Max and I had stood at the railing together, waving white handkerchiefs—more wedding presents—monogrammed with our initials: his the same as always, mine now with a C in place of the B, although professionally I would continue to go by my real name.

Our families—both his parents and mine, in from New Jersey and Washington, D.C., respectively—had waved back, presumably until we were out of their sight. They got along swimmingly, to our delight and surprise; they were going to lunch together after seeing us off.

We watched until Manhattan receded behind the rooftops of Brooklyn and the ship met the open water of Gravesend Bay.

Then we sat side by side on deck chairs, Max to read and me to write a bit more in the little blue book labeled LEST WE FORGET. Bound in leather, it had a gold lock, the kind often found on the diaries one received and was encouraged to keep as a child. Eminently pickable, those locks were just for looks; growing up, I always hid my diary from my older brother under the mattress of my bed.

There were no secrets, though, in this one—nothing dark to confess, just pure happiness. A document boring to anyone but myself, the author.

The least ecstatic thing I wrote as the wind picked up and the seagulls dropped away was My one regret is that I wish I had met my husband sooner.

Young Lillian Boxfish had been a scoffer at not only love but also vacations—if we lived better day-to-day, I often suggested, we might not be so desperate to escape—but now I was prepared to sup on my own words. For years I had heard ocean voyages described with implausibly rapturous superlatives, but this particular journey really did prove itself magical.

Along with everyone else in first class, we dressed up each day and every night. I wore velvet shoes and crêpe de chine dresses and silk nightgowns with collars of handmade lace. It felt less like getting all set for a fancy fête, more like preparing to put on a play—just the way Helen and I used to do, draping ourselves in bedclothes at the Christian Women’s Hotel—only with the whole ship for our stage and a script that we made up on the spot.

I looked forward to glowing wines and southern sunshine.

My frozen northern soul thawed. We were beautified by love.