Alternate Side(58)

“Nobody’s really from there…Carolyn,” Charlie said. Charlie always tried to personalize things, with the rental-car clerk, the bagger at the grocery story. If a person wore a name tag, Charlie would use the first name, although it had become less offhanded and neighborly now that his vision was shot and he had to take that telltale minute to narrow his eyes and parse the letters. “Everybody in New York is really from somewhere else.” And there was the problem in a nutshell. Nora had been a New Yorker from the very first usurious security/first-month/last-month check on that ratty apartment. When she thought of the gifts she had given her children, one of them was that for the rest of their lives, when a form said “Place of birth,” they could write “New York City.”

There were three types of people in New York: people like Nora, who had found their home there; people who talked about how much they hated it and would always live and eventually die there; and people who always had one foot over the border, to Scarsdale or Roslyn or Boca Raton. Once upon a time those last had been driven out by muggings and cockroaches. Now they left because of five-figure monthly rents, three-figure restaurant lunches, and the covert realization that if you weren’t a big winner, you were a loser. Nora suspected her husband had unconsciously consigned himself to the last camp.

All the qualities that made people love Charlie—“Charlie Nolan, the best,” so many of them said—were the same ones that would ensure that he was never a major player. So he blamed the block, the firm, the city. If only they were somewhere else, he would be someone else.

And he was right. It was hard to be important in New York. Sometimes Nora felt guilty because she knew he would have been aces elsewhere, the president of a small bank in a city in North Carolina chairing the United Way campaign, the mayor of a town of fifty thousand people who would always respond to citizen calls. Once she’d suggested that he might want to try something else, perhaps become a teacher or a coach. “Yeah, that’ll pay the maintenance on this place,” he said, but Nora had been able to tell that he was insulted. You could argue they’d lost their way, in their choices, their work, their marriage. But the truth was, there wasn’t any way. There was just day after day, small stuff, idle conversation, scheduling. And then after a couple of decades it somehow added up to something, for good or for ill or for both.

On the plane Charlie put his hand over Nora’s and said, “Come on, Bun. They have art galleries and chamber music and a marathon you could run. I could golf year-round. Aren’t you tired of all the craziness?”

“All what craziness?” Nora said. “The only craziness is restaurant reservations.”

“Things on the block are crazy. You can cut the atmosphere with a knife some mornings.” Nora had to admit that this was true. People who had once easily met and chatted on the street now passed with stiff, perfunctory greetings, or even crossed to the other side.

“There’s a financial outfit in Charlotte that has an office there,” Charlie added. “They’d hire me in a minute.”

Nora settled back in her seat and closed her eyes.

“Just think about it,” Charlie said as the plane lifted off, and then again as they came down the escalator to where the scrum of limo drivers gathered, like undertakers in their black suits. NOLLAND, said one sign in capital letters.

“They can’t even spell, these people,” Charlie muttered.

“No whining on the yacht.” That’s what Christine always said when Nora complained about lousy food in first class, or a manicurist who had nicked her cuticle, or a luxury hotel. “Spotty wireless and a wait for room service? Poor baby,” Christine would say. Success had not spoiled her.

Both of them leaned back against the headrests in the SUV. “Do you have a preferred route, sir?” said the driver.

“Take the tunnel,” Charlie said, as Nora said, “Take the bridge.”

Nora laughed. Charlie didn’t. “It’ll be a nightmare either way,” he said.

Homer didn’t greet them as they wheeled their suitcases into the foyer. He emerged slowly, almost painfully, from his kennel, blinking in the light. “How would you like to have a big yard?” Charlie said, scratching behind his ear. “How would you like to spend the rest of your life off the leash?”

“Oh, come on,” Nora said. “Really? Using the dog?”

“Fine,” Charlie said, trudging up the stairs. “You take him for a walk.”

She supposed if she wanted to move to a gated community with a tennis club and a pool in the backyard this was one of the cards Nora would have played, too. The last dog walk of the night was always more or less unpleasant, trying to pick up after Homer wearing gloves in winter, watching him sniff at and then try to snag some piece of garbage when the weather warmed. He was almost thirteen now and had slowed down so much, especially at the end of the day, that a walk to the corner and back took even longer than it had when he was a puppy and she had felt foolish telling him what a good good good dog he was, making pee-pee off the curb, pooping outside instead of in the house.

“You are a good dog,” she said aloud, remembering those days, but Homer didn’t turn his head, although his pointed ears swiveled back slightly. Just before the Lessman house, he pulled suddenly forward, hard, and Nora yanked him back. “What are you doing?” Nora asked, and then watched as a large rat trundled from curb to sidewalk and into the shadowed steps down to the well of the Lessman basement. Homer finally turned then because Nora had shrieked without meaning to, a kind of adrenaline charge through her whole body and out her mouth. She had unconsciously put her hand on her heart.