New York Echoes (23 page)

“What does it look
like, buddy?”

The man muttered something
into his walkie-talkie and maneuvered James into the car. A small group of
people had gathered, watching the spectacle.

“But why?” James
protested as he sank into the back seat of the car.

“Come on man. Don't
bullshit us. You know why.”

James was confounded.
He had begun to perspire through his clothes.

“There must be some
mistake.”

“No mistake. We've had
an eye on you for a long time.”

“A long time?”

He lapsed into
silence, certain now that they had made a mistake. The car moved up the street
then slowed briefly. He noted that the woman had stopped.

“We got him,” the bald
man said. The woman nodded.

“I don't understand,”
James pleaded.

“Stalking, mister.
It's a serious offense.”

“Stalking?”

The word seemed
foreign, out of context.

“I can explain,” he
said.

“You'll have to,” the
bald cop said.

In the police station,
he felt humiliated by the process of being arrested, offering to explain at
every step. Finally, he was given the opportunity. He was brought into a room
and introduced to a detective who sat opposite him at a table. A stenographer
sat nearby taking notes on a machine.

“You realize you can
have counsel,” the detective said. He was a man with a dark complexion who
showed little emotion.

“For what?” James
asked, still certain that this was simply a misunderstanding.

“Well then,” the
detective said. “We're listening.”

 Trying to appear
ingratiating, he told his story as best he could under the circumstances.
Unfortunately the threatening nature of the atmosphere inhibited his
intentions. He felt inept and embarrassed, and his narrative seemed disjointed.
The detective listened impassively.

“I wanted to be sure
it was her,” he concluded. “I wanted to be sure.”

The detective
shrugged, lowered his eyes, and looked at his notes.

“Mrs. Martin was
panicked. We had to respond.”

Martin! This was the
first time he had heard her name. How wrong his assumptions were. He felt
ridiculous.

“Believe me,” James
said, his tone pleading. “I've never been in this position. It was totally
innocent, really. I'm so sorry. I had no idea that the woman knew she was being
followed.” He corrected himself. “Not followed exactly. Observed. I wanted to
be sure. I was just being overly cautious I guess. It was a long time ago.
People change after fifty years.”

“No shit,” detective
said, cracking a thin smile. Was it a sign he should feel more at ease?

“So you see I'm not
what you would call a stalker,” James said, believing he was making his
position clearer now. “I had no bad intentions.”

“How could she have
known that? Older people get scared.”

“I understand. I guess
you might say I was foolish.”

“Very. We've talked to
every one along the line, the waiter at the restaurant, the messenger, the
doorman, others who witnessed your conduct. You were, clearly, stalking this
woman.”

“I told you,” he
protested, unable to comprehend the thoroughness of their surveillance. He
wanted to berate them for wasting time and money on such trivia, but he held
his tongue. “My God. I thought she was someone I had known when I was a kid. That's
the long and short of it.”

“No matter. You
stalked her.”

“I admit it. I
followed her. I told you why. But I did not stalk.”

The detective left him
alone in the room. It was an awful time for him. Despite the absurdity of the
situation, and the knowledge of his innocence, the accusation was very real and
menacing.

The time passed
slowly. He tried the door to the room. It was locked. This is truly crazy, he
thought.  Surely, this could easily be untangled.

He admitted to himself
that his obsession had gone beyond reason. He had gotten caught up in a fantasy
of his past, perhaps a by-product of grief and the silly idea that he was
searching to recapture his youth. He saw his actions more clearly now. Of
course, this woman was not Vera Vasis. He had invented her out of the strands
of an old fantasy. From the woman's perspective he supposed he could be defined
as a stalker.

The outcome did not
look promising and he contemplated getting a lawyer to extract him from this
mess.

After about an hour,
the door opened and the detectives who had brought him in appeared with the
woman he was accused of stalking. She appeared wary at first, her glance
washing over him in a penetrating stare. Their eyes locked.

He had not, until
then, confronted her eyes. It could be her, he told himself, but he was too
frightened to acknowledge the suspicion. Better to keep his mouth shut.

“Do you know him?” the
detective asked the woman. “His name is Charles. James Charles.” It seemed
clear that they had briefed her about his story.

“I'm really James . .
. James Papanopolis,” he whispered, “I changed it. Easier to pronounce.“ His
voice sounded nervous and reedy. As he spoke, he remained locked into her stare
sensing a vague sense of familiarity.  Could it be her? Maybe? The passage of time
distorted recognition.

She shook her head.

“I never saw him in my
life.”

“I was James
Papanopolis,” he said, feeling foolish, clearing his throat.

“Sorry,” the woman
said.

“I'm not a stalker,”
James said, finding his voice's strength again.

“If not, it was a good
imitation,” the detective said.

“He stalked me. Day
after day. It was awful.”

“Please forgive me. It
was wrong. I'm so sorry if I caused you any concern.

“You scared the hell
out of her,” the detective said.

“I'm sorry.”

“Well then,” the detective
asked, turning to the woman. “Do you wish to press charges?”

The woman, still
unsmiling, grew thoughtful for a moment. She stared at him again, but offered
no emotional signals.

“Absolutely,” she said
at last, turning, proceeding toward the door.

“It was an innocent
thing,” James pleaded. “I meant no harm.”

Without turning, the
woman left the room and the detective held him back.

“Sorry, Buddy.”         

The next few weeks
were a nightmare of anxiety. He had to post bail, hire a lawyer, explain his
motives. The lawyer warned him that he could serve time in prison, which
shocked him.

“For this?”

“A possibility,” the
lawyer told him. “Depends on the woman. She is very angry. Stalking is pretty
scary.”

“I thought I knew
her.”

“Let's leave that
alone. Makes it worse.”

“I'm guess I'm an
innocent victim of my own fantasies.”

The lawyer nodded his
agreement with that assessment.

“We could always cop a
plea, plead guilty, invoke the age thing. Make a deal.

“The age thing?”

“Age does something to
the memory.”

“Like this was because
I'm senile. Is that the idea?”

“It's a good ploy.”
the lawyer shrugged. “Might get you off with a suspended and community service.”

“Plead guilty? For
what? It's out of the question.”

“Your call.”

He tried to explain
the events to his children, but they seemed perplexed, and he could tell from
their reaction that they really thought he was going senile.

How could this happen?
Never in his life had he been in trouble with the police. Never! It was a bad
dream and darkly colored the renewal of his New York experience. He
contemplated going back to Phoenix after this was over.

Events dragged on.
Court dates were made and postponed. He lived his life in a kind of limbo. No
longer did he search the faces of people for signs of his past friendships. No
longer did he take advantage of any of New York's amusements. He stopped
talking to people, stopped reading the
New York Times,
stopped visiting
his children. Instead, he brooded and stayed in his apartment all day. He
missed Sally. There was no one to talk with, no one who understood, no one who
would regard him sympathetically. He felt alone.

Then one day, his
lawyer called to tell him that a meeting had been arranged between the parties
at the office of the assistant district attorney who was handling the case.
When he asked for an explanation the lawyer told him that they might want to
plea bargain. He wasn't sure what that meant, but it did sound hopeful,
although he was determined not to plead guilty to a lie.

When he met the
assistant district attorney in his office with his lawyer present, he was
surprised to see the woman.

“Mrs. Martin has
requested that she meet with Mr. Charles privately.”

“Is she withdrawing
her charges?”

“The charges remain,”
the assistant district attorney said. “The issue is whether she will testify.”

“And without that
there is no case,” his lawyer said, turning to Mrs. Martin. “Am I correct?”

Mrs. Martin said
nothing, not responding by gesture or expression. Suddenly the assistant
district attorney stood up.

“We will give you ten
minutes Mrs. Martin. Defense counsel and I will be in the next room.”

The woman nodded. The
men left the room. James was puzzled by this turn of events. They sat in chairs
a few feet from each other. When the lawyers had left, the woman turned to him
and began to speak.

“What you did was
terrible, disgusting.”

The woman's expression
became a snarl. Her anger was palpable. In her eyes, James saw unmistakable
contempt.

“I'm very sorry,”
James said, stunned by the energy of her outburst. “I meant no harm. It has
been a terrible ordeal.”

“Good,” the woman
said. “I hope it has been painful.”

“Yes it has,” he said
with a sigh. In his mind the punishment somehow did not fit his alleged crime.
What had he done?

“I thought of this
many times,” she said.

James remained silent.
He was totally confused by her bellicose attitude.

“I am her,” she
whispered through tightly pursed lips.

“Vera Vasis?”

She nodded.

“You were the hate of
my life,” she said, sucking in a deep breath. “I could never get it out of my
system.”

He started to speak,
but she held up her hand to stop him. He had many questions to ask.

“Please. No
explanations. No apologies. No words. We were trapped into silence. I spent a
lifetime fantasizing revenge.”

“I was a stupid
jealous teenage boy . . .” he began.   

“I don't want to hear
your story and I won't tell you mine.”

“People forgive . .
.” he began again.

“Not me,” she said.

He studied her face,
looking for signs of the young girl he once loved. He knew now why he could
never be certain. A lifetime of anger had distorted her aspect.

“I wish I could have
gone further than this,” she hissed. “It will have to do for the moment.”

“For the moment?” he
muttered.

“I will take this to
the grave,” she said, turning her head, as if to remove him from her sight.

They waited in silence
until the lawyers returned.

Late spring, cerulean blue sky,
sun-dappled terrace of this pleasant Greenwich Village café and here he was,
Harry Waldman, thinking strange thoughts about Milton Horowitz. He hadn't
thought about Milton Horowitz for easily forty-five years. He wasn't even in
his radar range. In fact, he thought he had forgotten him entirely, wiped his
mind of all memory of this man who had for a brief time touched his life,
profoundly. For how long? Two, maybe four years. 

Then, out of blue, he had gotten this
e-mail. And then he knew the man had touched him for a lifetime.

“My name is Shirley Tannebaum. I am the
granddaughter of Milton Horowitz. He died twenty years ago when I was three. He
was a writer and I am trying to find out more about him and his writings. You
were one of the writers in an anthology of short stories published years ago
that I discovered on a used book site on the internet. I am taking my masters
in creative writing at New York University and would be happy to hear from you
to discuss my grandfather. Thank you. Shirley.”

His first thought, once Milton had been
retrieved from the mud of memory, was astonishment that Milton had died. His
second thought was surprise that instead of the warm nostalgia the name
suggested, an odd anger had assailed him. It wasn't at all like the kind of
anger inspired by ugly disagreement, insult, or personal abuse and betrayal. Milton had always been kind, interested, respectful, and mentoring.

Harry had met people before who seemed to be born to the cloth,
surefire success stories. They were the stars of high school and college, the
chosen ones, who lived in the glow of promise, as if they were anointed by
destiny. He used to be in awe of these people. It was certainly jealousy. That
didn't explain the anger toward Milton.

What afflicted him was another kind of
anger, an anger generated by Milton's failure to find his destiny, to realize
the full flowering of his talent, to lose his way. It was like suddenly coming
upon a tattered college yearbook and finding under Milton's picture that most
prophetic and dangerous line, “most likely to succeed.”  How dare him not to
have lived up that promise.

Since that e-mail from Milton's
granddaughter, he had become obsessed by thoughts of Milton Horowitz. Why
hadn't Milton Horowitz realized his full potential? Milton was the best of all
of those wannabe writers of his youth, the very best. 

He had met Milton when they were both taking creative writing courses at the New School in Manhattan. It was after the war, the big one, and the thirty-odd students were a grab
bag of types of all ages, a number of them veterans, a couple of gray heads,
about a third women and one black. He remembered the one black because he had a
name that sounded Irish.

Milton was the class hero, the golden
boy of promise. He had already published a couple of short stories and poems in
small literary magazines and was clearly marked, by everyone including the kind
wonderful inspiring and encouraging Professor Fox, who taught the course, as
someone with greatness engraved on his forehead.

Creative writing courses in fiction were
a kind of aberration, since about all that could ever be taught was craft.
Talent was innate, a mysterious gift, perhaps a genetic hand-down from some
unknown ancestor. No one knew. But craft, of course, could not be ignored and
so everyone listened carefully to Professor Fox as he analyzed the offerings of
his students and filled them with red-inked chicken marks of delight when he
came across an image, a sentence, or a passage that conveyed some special way
of presenting a work of the imagination.

Everyone in the class shared the same
dreams of fame and fortune. Why were they there? They lusted for the fame of
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. Of John O'Hara and Thomas Wolfe, the
heroes of the day. Some, of course, were merely experimenting with hopes and
dreams. To some of the others, like him, they knew in their bones they were
pursuing a calling, a compulsion for which there was no cure and would obsess
them for the rest of their lives.

At twenty he knew it was true and at
seventy, his age now, he knew it was true. Nothing had intervened in those years,
no traumas, failures, rejections, no slings and arrows pointed in his
direction, drawing blood and breaking skin, had ever turned him away from that
bedrock truth. Milton knew, not only that it was true for him, but he had an
uncanny instinct for spotting others with the same affliction.

Among this group of
obsessed kinsman, Milton was clearly the cream of the crop. His writing was
praised, lauded actually, when he stood up to read his material. The fact was
that he was an awesome reader, which gave his work added heft and impressed the
hell out of all those wannabes. His future success was undeniable. He had the
look, the demeanor, and attitude of a winner.

And, of course, there was the talent,
recognizable, natural, inherent.  It seemed a consensus, and listening to him
reading his work, one could not fail to join in the mutual appraisal. It was
the prevailing view.

The class met weekly, but Milton formed an inner circle of those he had chosen, anointed actually, to what he called
a “true writers” group. He had recognized instinctively who possessed this
fierce need to do it, to pursue it to the death. Any true artist would
understand. For them writing works of the imagination was everything, the
world, the only activity worth living for. Rarely was it articulated. Every one
of the half dozen in Milton's group, two women and four men, knew it in their
gut.

There were six of
them. About a decade separated the youngest from the oldest. Harry was the
youngest and, to be honest, thought he was outclassed and outgunned by the
talent of the others. The group would meet on a different day weekly at the
home of one of the six to showcase their efforts to each other.

It was strictly a
coffee-and-cookie event since everyone was pretty close to the edge financially.
But to be chosen by Milton to join that charmed circle was, indeed, a feather
in one's cap. Admittedly, by being chosen, Harry Waldman thought he had arrived
in nirvana, a first step on the road to literary recognition. Milton had laid
his hand on him. He had been anointed.

Of the various offerings read by members
of the group, Harry's memory had become collective. They were, he was certain,
great, vivid, wonderful, inspiring, more than promising, the best of the best.
By some strange chemistry of mutual admiration, there seemed to be no
competitive back biting, only praise and astonishment, as if they were all
rooting for each other. Milton, as always was the principal cheerleader.

The school did arrange
for the work of most of the class to be collected and published in a hardcover
anthology, “Which Grain Will Grow,”  the title taken from a couple of lines
from
Macbeth:
“If you can look into the seeds of time and say which
grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me.” Milton's story,
naturally, was the first story in the book. Harry's was somewhere in the
middle.

There was a big celebration when the
book came out. It seemed then that this was the opening gun in the race toward
fame and fortune and, perhaps, as everyone silently believed in their heart,
immortality.

As predicted, Milton was the first of
the group to receive a publishing contract for a novel. It was, of course,
predictable. Indeed, it was a necessary validation that he was marked for
greatness. Milton, as usual, was gracious in accepting his success and
encouraging to the others, as if to say, I'll point the way and you will all
follow.  Everyone was sure it would come true.

How long did their little group stay
together? At most a couple of years. Life intervened, he supposed. Love,
marriage, children, the necessities of earning a living, the usual. He knew, of
course, that none of them would ever let go of their dream. It was destined to
be their blood-sucking leech, forever feeding on their blood for nourishment as
it had for the rest of his life and still would as long as he his heart beat.
Imagine, Harry thought, all this had occurred in a mere blip of time. Nearly
fifty years ago.

But as he waited there
for Milton's granddaughter on this pleasant spring day under a cerulean sky,
nursing his Bloody Mary, protected from the sun by the umbrella over the
outdoor table, he still could not shake his anger. How come he had heard
nothing, nothing about Milton Horowitz for forty-five years or more?

“I recognized you from the picture on
your book jackets,” a voice said. He looked up at her face, blocked by the sun.
“I'm Shirley Tannenbaum,” she said, sitting down, smiling, open-faced and
eager, her hair glossy with youth, her teeth sparkled by the sun. He noted that
she was carefully groomed, wearing a crisp white blouse and jeans, with a
bright yellow scarf artfully wrapped around her neck.

He studied her face for any trace of
what he remembered about Milton. The eyes, he decided, but he couldn't be sure.
Had he ever looked that deeply into Milton's eyes?

“I'm so happy you could see me, Mr.
Waldman. I've read all your books.”

“Really?”

How could he not be flattered,
especially by her generational applause? He had done well, he supposed. At
least in retrospect. What she did not know or could not know was that this
affliction that plagued the real writer could not be cured by worldly success.
She would think such an observation was ingenious and he merely thanked her. He
thanked her politely. Readers were always welcome.

They ordered brunch and he craftily got
her to tell her own story. On the surface it seemed fairly routine. Her father
was a lawyer, her mother, Milton's daughter, was  a doctor, obviously super
achievers, comfortable, upper-middle class, liberal, savvy,  supporters of the
arts, traditional. No rebellion here, no sixties angst. She was the daughter of
baby boomers. Milton was an Air Force veteran, stateside through most of the
war, he remembered. He had been too young to serve. Shirley had majored in
English, at Harvard, and was now getting a master's in creative writing at NYU.

It was, he thought, wonderful to listen
to her, full of hope and ambition, self-effacing, modest. I could love her, he
thought, if I was forty years younger. He had been married twice, been in love
six or seven times, had a rocky history with women in general and was now
content to be alone with his muse, although it had been years since his muse
had provided worldly success. There had been moments, of course. A movie made
from one of this books, a number of foreign sales. He was financially
comfortable, drifting forward on the stream of life heading toward the open
sea. He liked that metaphor.

Expertly, writers of the imagination
were adept at such biographical mining; he drew from her the bare facts of her
life. No, she was not involved in a relationship. Relationship was the
operative word of her generation. What he was doing, he realized, was
deliberately postponing the reason for their meeting. The fact was that he had
not yet formed a proper response. What he really wanted to know from her was
why, why in the name of God, had Milton not made it as a published writer. Not
one book published. He felt his rage return and he ordered another Bloody Mary.
Finally the subject became unavoidable.

“So tell me about my grandfather?” she
asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

She seemed startled by the comment,
perhaps it seemed belligerent.

“What I mean is,” he corrected. “I think
I know why.”

“Obviously,” she said. He realized that
he had touched a nerve. “He was a writer. I mean I was only three when he died,
but my mother told me that he had always wanted to be writer, that he had
published some short stories and a few poems and had once written a novel that
was never published.” She paused. “By some strange genetic chemistry. I don't
understand it myself. You see, I want to be a writer. That's all I ever wanted
to be. Nothing else interests me. I have two brothers who are both in med
school. My parents wanted me to go to law school and my mother just hates the
idea that I want to be a writer.”

“Why?” he asked.  He knew he was being
cagey, but it was at the very heart of this interview.

“She thinks that it had nearly ruined
their lives. Her father's ambition. She says it drove him into depression. He was,
how did she put it, beyond joy. Oh he was a fair provider. He was a candy
salesman. Not a great living. But she and my uncle, her brother, had it OK.
Good education. They lived for years in a rental apartment in Rego Park. My Uncle Ben is a businessman. My grandma lived about nineteen years after my
grandfather died. Apparently she had never been happy and never did marry
again.” For a moment she had drifted off the subject, then she came back again.
“I read his short stories and his poems. I think the novel is missing.
Apparently, he stopped writing. I don't know when. He was only fifty when he
died. Grandma said he couldn't make a living as a writer. No way. She had a
conniption when I told her what I wanted to be. She said in the end, it killed
him.”  

“From what?” he asked.
Why was it suddenly important to ask?

“Heart attack, I
think.” She paused and their eyes met. He was sure now she knew, that she was
one of the afflicted. “Broken heart, probably.”

“But why? He had other
novels in him. Why stop? Nobody knows for sure about the worth of anything in
this game.”

He felt his rage begin again. He had the
talent? Why didn't he have the courage to go on? The staying power? The
decision makers fade quickly into the dustbin of history and others take their place.
Rejection was an occupational hazard in his world. He had been rejected by
battalions, long dead and gone, along with their choices. He had a test. Name
five of the Nobel Prize Winners for Literature. Name a half dozen who won a
Pulitzer. Inevitably most failed the test. He decided against making his point.