The Cosmopolitans (2 page)

“I think you're right,” Bette nodded, reassured. “What else?”

Sal closed his eyes. First tight, but then a vision appeared internally, and he seemed to read its prophecy on the insides of his own lids. “Wait!” His tiny pink lips pursed and then relaxed. “I see a . . . big change.”

“You do?”

“I see a stranger, a mysterious stranger.”

“Is she bearing gifts?” Bette chuckled to herself.

“No.” Sal opened his eyes. “Her pockets are empty. She only brings herself.”

“And that will change
everything
? Her . . .
self
?”

“Yes,” Sal said. And smiled, once again turning into a little boy with a delicate future.

“Okay,” Bette said. “I'll keep a lookout.”

It was dinnertime now all over the Village. Not too many takers for Salvatore's fresh squeezed. But always working until the last moment, the boy waited for his mother to come home before finally closing up shop. There she was! Back from the slaughterhouse on Sullivan Street with her fresh killed rabbit, soon to be dinner. She paused on the corner of Ninth, at Readers Stationery Store to pick up a copy of the
Mirror
, then smiled at her son, the cue for him to swallow the last rewarding drop.

On Tenth between University and Broadway, an art gallery had a wealthy visitor. A beige Bentley pulled up, then stood idling as the Negro chauffeur stepped out. He looked left and right at the folks on the street and then entered, hat in hand, through the gallery's front door. He had grace and training, this chauffeur. Clearly, he had prepared for some other profession. The Italians stared at the car, staying fixed in their folding chairs, postponing dinner preparations to enjoy the special event. Chauffeur was a good-looking man, his uniform matched the car.

The bells at Grace Episcopal Church finally tolled six. On cue, the poor and rich artists, the middle-class and destitute painters and floating sculptors climbed
out of their studios, scruffily distracted and ready for cocktails. Beer beckoned for now, followed later by whiskey, and right before dawn, a handful would have a great idea and stumble back to easel, floor, and wall. Willem de Kooning and an unknown would come to fisticuffs in about six hours, somewhere in the back of the Cedar Tavern. It could be over a girl they were both lying to or about, or a painting that really mattered.

The lady gallery owner and the chauffeur emerged from her store. They had obviously conferred. He opened the car's back door, and she climbed in to discuss with the sedan's mysterious owner. It was a mobile office for someone too grand to roam the streets. Too special to be seen. The car's windows were tinted black, so the neighbors could not peek inside. Children started to gather, and Salvatore daringly tried to press his nose against the glass. He decided right then and there that he, too, wanted a Bentley, and that when he had one, he would never come out, never satisfy the desires of others. Chauffeur did his duty and kept the bewitched children at bay. Finally, the gallery owner, a prim, muscular lady with a seductive smile, flowing hair, and a special suit, hurried out of the car so fast that Chauffeur didn't have a chance to hold open the door. She turned out the gallery's lights, locked up, and glided right back to the sedan with her purse and hat. This time he was ready and secured the sanctuary with an assured and assuring move. The car whisked away on its own cloud and this allowed everyone else to get back to their tasks of cooking, drinking, and loving. As they cried and celebrated together and alone.

The Italians and the artists? They meet over commerce.
The artists rent from the Italians or live next door. They buy their vegetables and both overhear each other's travails. Every now and then, an artist speaks some Italian because he studied there, or romanced a girl, or his mother back home in Philadelphia was from Calabria. Once one sculptor and his neighbor enjoyed a recording of Maria Callas singing
Norma
together and shared a pack of cigarettes, but that was more out of a novel than for real. It was a
LIFE
magazine moment, and yet it happened. Mostly the two worlds rarely met, just passed each other by on the same quiet street, coming and going to opposing destinations. More likely, Salvatore and a painter's daughter would both go to Washington Square Park, tear off their clothes, and run into the same water fountain to dance around topless in their underpants when it got too hot for decorum. Would they recognize each other and wave? Yes. Maybe later Sal will grow to love paintings and cross the line. Maybe the girl will despise the men who lied to her mother in the back of Cedar Tavern and find a nice reliable Italian boy to marry and feed.

There is the tailor in his shop window. Bette could see him pull on the sewing machine cover, fasten its snaps. He cares for that machine, oils it and dusts it. All his dreams are there, his children's futures, God willing. Every night he rolls his shirtsleeves back over his concentration camp number, locks up for the night, and goes home to Washington Heights. As he pulls the front door shut and puts on his outside hat, the guests at the Albert Hotel next door are just beginning to roll out of their cages. Last night's mascara still running. They pick up their relief checks from wooden mailboxes stacked behind the front desk. Once again it's too late
in the day to cash them at the bank. The desk clerk says no for the hundredth time, ignores an offer of a sexual favor, and gets back to marking his notebook. The queens shrug, scrounge for a cigarette. Start to think about coffee and . . .
then what?

On Tenth Street, a brownstone built in 1880 is for sale for $30,000. In the middle of the block. But who has $30,000? The Italians, the painters, Mrs. O'Reilly, Joe, the hotel residents in their outré laissez-faire allure, Rubin the deli guy, Romanoff the white Russian pharmacist, the tailor, and our friend Bette all shake their heads.
Who has that kind of money?
they wonder. And this thought unites them, although they do not realize why. The art dealer's secret friend
could
buy it, of course, but she already has a townhouse of her own, in the east Fifties. Only Bette knows that the building in question figured prominently in a novel by the great Edith Wharton, as did the Grace Episcopal Church, whose bells have now completed their ringing. Bette realized this midpage and ran outside so quickly to take a peek that the book fell to the floor. She stood on the sidewalk and stared at the grand home, its great windows, sweeping stairs, and copper face. It was true, she knew, that she lived in a novel right here in New York. They all did. And a painting. And a factory. And a dreamland. That is to say, a film.

The young writer clerking the Albert Hotel's night shift studies at City College to become a teacher so that he can earn a real living instead of writing his books from behind the hotel's front desk. This boy, named Sam, has also read the same Edith Wharton novel. But he never put two and two together. And he never would.

Chapter 2

O
n April 4, 1928, Bette arrived by bus to Manhattan Island. For a whole month she avoided the trolleys, double-deckers, and elevated trains as she could not imagine how to approach them. Instead, young Bette stayed in her rooming house on West Twenty-Fifth Street and walked to every destination, finding a counter job at an all-night diner on Sixty-Second and Eighth Avenue. Coming home too late through the Irish slum of Hell's Kitchen, she wondered about her safety and how to assess it. The cook from the diner, a Negro boy named Earl, also a tender twenty years of age, kindly escorted her and started to explain what then became obvious. In New York City there were all sides of the track on the same block. And that's the key to how the machine churned.

“When you walk into a place, you say, ‘Hi, how're you doing?'” Earl instructed. “And then you go to the other side of the room.”

“Well, what good is that?”

“It's a world of good.” Earl knew. That was clear. “You show them that you see who they are, you show respect, honor them with a greeting, and then move to a corner so they don't worry that you want something more.”

“You establish,” Bette summarized.

“Exactly.”

And so their understanding was born.

Turned out the apartment next to Earl's had long stood empty, and so on a hot August afternoon, she moved in. It didn't take but one trip up the stairs, everything Bette owned was in her arms.

“That's what makes New Yorkers tough,” Earl realized, watching her sweat from so little labor. “It's not the crime or whatnot. I'm telling you, it's the weather. The winter is too cold, the summer is too hot, and spring lasts a week and a half.”

Winter
was
too cold. Not colder than Ohio of course, but several months of three or four feet of snow in a city that just can't rest is a lot of work. That's for sure.

For the next thirty years, Bette and Earl discussed the length of each New York spring.

“This one is three whole weeks!” Bette would say with joy, when it applied.

“Like I said,” Earl repeated when necessary. “Spring in New York only lasts a week and a half.”

Earl lived there with a white boy named Anthony, who was a real cut-up and a distant good looker. Anthony had the place originally and then invited Earl to share it with him. But when things soured between the boys, Anthony was decent enough to not inform the landlord, and let Earl keep the apartment. Eventually
the original owner died and when his son came to inspect the place, Earl's tenancy was a “fait accompli.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means,” Earl said, “that it's yesterday's news.”

A lonely breeze swept through Anthony's absence, until the night he just reappeared and suddenly everything was back to normal.

It was clear to Bette from the start that there was no romantic future between herself and Earl or herself and Anthony. Or really herself and anyone. What had happened back home was still burning inside, it was still alive and growing and it was going to take more than some nice-looking fellows. It was like she'd been whipped and never able to get hold of some balm. The sores kept opening, opening, crusting and cracking. She'd see a couple with their child walking down the street, not questioning their bond, and this pain of absence would crawl up her throat and beat at the backs of her eyes until they bled. She felt the venal drip, too thick for tears. But by the time she'd made it to a mirror, it was always gone.

So, one night when Anthony casually draped his arm around Earl's shoulder, she understood that that was the way it was and a kind of joy exploded in Bette's chest. She would never have to explain
herself
. She would never be the most endangered. She would love Earl and Anthony and they would love her, and that's all there was to it. No worry. That precise night she relaxed. That was the most relaxing night of her life. That was the moment she first told anyone about Frederick.

She entranced Earl and Anthony for hours with
her own secret catalog of detail. After half the night had passed, the men went out for a bucket of beer and returned right away, having thought a great deal about her story and wanting to hear more. The compassion. The three sipped that sweet beer and the sparrows' wings fluttered in the night. Even after the graveyard-shift workers stumbled back from the docks and the streetlights came on again, the three of them talked. The boys asked the right thoughtful questions and they cared about the answers. They nodded and commented with recognition. Earl took her hand and said, “I understand.”

No one in Bette's life had understood or even said that they did, and now she had both gifts in one person. Now she could burn, bleed, and talk about what that was like, and there would be no problem. As she spoke, Bette started to see her own self more clearly. She started to discover things that silence had camouflaged. Bette found herself recalling details and attributing meaning to those details that all the internal repetition in her mind had kept under wraps. From this day forward Bette lived her life by thinking and then discussing her thoughts with Earl. It was the only combination that worked. In a way, she realized that this was why she had come to New York after all, to find someone to talk to. Now that she'd found him, her life would make sense. Bette was reassured.

At first there was an ice box, gas light, and a coal-burning furnace in the cellar. The ice man's horse brayed for oats, snapping its heels on the cobblestoned streets. Knickers and caps were the style for young men, and Earl kept that going for a while. Anthony
brought home fashion magazines from the printing factory from time to time, and Bette glanced at them but never really tried to be a flapper. It was only after the triumph of registering to vote that she stepped out on her own and appeared at dinner suddenly with a bob. Both Bette and Earl were staunch Democrats, but Anthony just didn't care much and took his vote for granted. As time passed, her short hair became more convenient than meaningful, and she'd dressed accordingly ever since. Long legs, short skirts, strands of beads over flat chests were never to be Bette's natural encasement. So when fuller dresses came back, she felt more at home and was relieved. A modest skirt and sweater really worked for Bette. It gave her privacy to feel.

Of course she drank illegal whiskey, they all did. The Fronton Club on Washington Place was a special treat. Earl pointed out Edna St. Vincent Millay drinking alone and this impressed Bette. Both that he recognized her and that Millay did whatever she cared to do. Charlie's Place was where Earl and Anthony could camp, as there were plenty of male couples and women making love to each other all around them. Bette looked at it all blankly. Romance held no appeal. She was still torn to pieces by Frederick's cruelty. She simply could not see how a person made the decision to behave that way. Until she understood, she would not be interested in men again. Chumley's was the most romantic of the illegal spots. From the outside, Bette couldn't perceive a thing, not a stir, voice, or sway until they passed through a sleepy courtyard as the bouncer watched from a gated peephole in the old wooden door.
Suddenly, when Anthony, Earl, and Bette were understood to be, of all things, desirable, he swung open the thick wooden portal, beckoning them into the deafening roar. That's why it was called the
Roaring
Twenties, she realized some decades later. Because those hidden places were capsules of explosive sounds of joy.

These speakeasies were the grand places where the three friends planned their futures, and so did all the city dwellers. Whiskey was a hope machine, and if one used it to be emboldened, dreams could certainly come true. Earl made up his mind one drunken night to be an actor, and the next day started going uptown to play small parts in basements and to midtown once in a while to play a spear-carrier. Bette and Anthony and Earl went out to see plays together and then read the scripts out loud at home. Bette had already started her secretarial courses and took off her waitress uniform for good when she got a job at Tibbs Advertising Incorporated as a stenographer. It was a big debate between the three of them as to whether she should save her white-collared server's dress and apron
just in case
, but she just decided to burn the thing. So, one night at 2:00 a.m., the three comrades went to Washington Square Park and set it on fire in a trash can while doing a wild dance.

The market crashed in 1929, but they didn't really feel it until 1932 when Anthony got fired from the printing plant. Bette held on to her job, but Earl had to start hacking slabs of beef in the meatpacking district where a lot of Negroes ended up. Prohibition was soon repealed to give the unemployed some way to eat up their pain, but no one could afford to go out for drinks
anyway. Being on the skids financially affected Anthony terribly. Normally, Earl would leave the house at four in the morning, Bette at seven thirty, and Anthony at eight. So traditionally she and Anthony would share a cup of coffee before they both began their day. Now, she'd leave him in the mornings with his wifebeater and cigarette, where he remained until her return. The only thing that had changed was his beard. Anthony suffered, and so did their neighbors. Evictions took place with regularity, and Bette found herself on the street with a crying neighbor, helpless and unknowing how to comfort or correct. She lacked so much knowledge for soothing others. It was startling. How pointless she both felt and was. How useless. Anthony suffered for three more years, and they lived off of pieces of discarded meat that Earl could bring home from the slaughterhouses. Finally, Anthony decided to go to see his parents and learn if it was true that they would never help him out no matter how bad it had gotten and how deep his need.

That first night was a strange night. Anthony had been expected home from the Bronx for dinner, and Earl and Bette waited without any discussion. They silently agreed. But by ten, it was clear something had happened, and they devoured the overfried potatoes and beef pieces. The next day he returned, shaved and with a new shirt that was too big on him, as if he had shrunk. He couldn't look either of them in the eye, and in his private time with Earl something terrible passed between them. The next day Anthony sat at Bette's table smoking a cigarette and then lurched suddenly and ran into his place next door. She heard
him rummaging, opening and slamming drawers, and then watched him take his belongings in Earl's suitcase, wearing Earl's old newsboy cap. He was gone.

Eventually, Earl learned that Anthony had returned to his father with the promise to get married, and that in 1937 he had gotten married. In 1939, when Earl saw him across the room in a bar for men, Earl begged him to return home, offering every possible promise, but the problem at the core of the negotiation was that Earl had not done anything wrong. So there was really nothing he could fix. The day after Pearl Harbor, Anthony signed up, and like so many with nothing to live for and so many with every hope in their breast pocket, he was killed in the Pacific. His wife became his widow, with all titles and benefits.

These events altered Earl and Bette. They switched places. At first when Anthony disappeared, Earl was stunned into silence. Then he tried to brush it off. This went on for years, they barely mentioned it. While a kind of forced normalcy took the place of grief, the resuming of regular activities seemed empty and uneventful. But once Earl encountered Anthony in that bar, once he had begged his love and been denied, then everything was out on the table.

Anthony looked at Earl as though from within a fog. His face was slack, his eyes were unfocused, his mouth was flat.

“I'm not in love with you, and I'm not attracted to you,” Anthony lied.

“You just want to be married and have men on the side so your father will love you,” Earl said, and then regretted it. Perhaps if he had lied to Anthony as well, he would have eventually come home.

This is what plagued Earl forever after. If he had lied to the liar, perhaps he could have had him back. But instead he'd told him the truth. It was his fault. Earl sat in Bette's apartment night after night and cried. He repeated his feelings, did not know how to change them. She understood this, of course, and now Bette was the experienced one. She knew what unjustified abandonment was like. She knew what betrayal meant. She knew. Frederick. Frederick. And so, somehow Bette and Earl became equals in knowledge. This is when their mutual understanding deepened. This is when their friendship turned as permanent as the ocean, as mysterious, as unquestioned, as wild, clean, and as endless. There had now been cycles of reliability, of compassion, of each one pulling the other's weight. It was all proven now. All clear. Earl found other men, but they never carried the same density, his interests were never as carefree. Everything was fraught. And even when Anthony died pointlessly, that pattern got worse. If Anthony had survived, he would have found his wife unbearable. But because Earl had told him the truth, he had fled into the arms of the enemy. Dead on a beach, barely making it to shore.

Over time, Earl and Bette came to the understanding that they shared a fatal flaw, one that set them apart from other people. They could both love completely, only once. It was a curse and yet a fact, and this is what had brought them to each other, this recognition. The one grace bestowed. In this particular emotional state, neither of them would ever be alone.

Now, it is 1958, and Bette's apartment's decor is more a product of the thirties and forties than this moment. Having come with nothing, every single object
had to be acquired. Nothing was handed down and few belongings arrived as gifts. For the most part, her possessions were selectively and carefully purchased or appeared by accident as neighbors moved or sold petty items out of desperation. An old crocheted lace doily sat underneath a crystal candy dish. The dish had represented a whim for occasional caramels, but now it held sewing needles and thread. A metal washbasin stored neatly underneath the sink, behind a light green curtain she replaced every few years. This basin was crucial as she used it daily to soak underwear and sore feet. Toes in the tub, sewing in her lap, she'd lean back into her rocking chair and rest. That chair came from a church sale on Carmine Street, and she'd carried it home herself even though it felt ridiculous to haul furniture through the neighborhood. Men did that, she well knew, but Earl was at work and she would not ask a stranger. She had arms, after all.