Well, this was a damned nuisance!
Maybe he’d meant to shove the wallet into his back pocket and missed. Served him right for being a little Western today, wearing levis and sneakers, carrying his wallet in his back pocket as he almost never did. Suddenly he remembered gripping the wallet between his knees after getting an extra dollar out of it for a tip. It must’ve fallen to the cab’s floor, so there was no chance he’d see it again. The next fare would see it and quietly pocket it.
What pained him was the loss of his favorite snapshot of Natalia and him, just before they got married, and just about the time Natalia had become pregnant. Maybe she had been then. I got married to get myself out of finishing school, Natalia had said a couple of times to friends, smiling. They had also got married because Natalia was pregnant, and she’d been frightened and nervous about having an abortion, frightened of having to give birth too, but fortunately she had given birth, and it hadn’t been too difficult. There were a couple of other snapshots of Natalia in that wallet, one looking so young and sure of herself at twenty-two, smiling, lips closed as usual, and with a bigger smile in her eyes. He’d never see the pictures again, and she would never look quite the same for any camera’s eye either.
“Goddam it!” Jack got up from the armchair.
There were the credit cards too, Brooks Brothers, American Express and some gas company. Which one? He’d have to write the credit card people right away, and he hoped he had his account numbers here, that they weren’t in the back of an address book that Natalia might have in Ardmore. Jack went to the kitchen, not quite as hungry as he had been. He’d have to go to his bank again tomorrow for cash, of which he had none now. Lucky he had some change for the subway.
Jack carried his plate of pastrami with dill pickle and cole slaw and a can of beer to the armchair in front of which he had set up one of the little folding tables that Natalia detested but put up with. “Dammit to hell,” Jack murmured as a final remark on the wallet, before he took a bite of his sandwich. The TV was still on, though Jack wasn’t interested. The TV was like another table in a restaurant, making a cozy noise.
The telephone rang and Jack got up, thinking it was Natalia, hoping she hadn’t already decided to delay her coming. “Hello?”
“Hello. May I speak to Mr Sutherland, please?”
“This is Sutherland. Speaking.”
“Can you tell me your first name?”
“Ye-es. John.”
“Did you lose something today, Mr Sutherland?”
What was the guy—he didn’t sound like a kid—up to? Money, of course, but Jack had a sudden hope of recovering at least the photos. “I lost a wallet.”
The man laughed a little. “Well, I’ve got it. All safe and sound. You’re the one in the picture? With the blond girl?”
Jack frowned, tense. “Yes.”
“Then I’ll know you when I see you. I wouldn’t want to give it to the wrong person. I’m not far away. Shall I bring it over? In the next quarter of an hour?”
“Yes, but—Look, maybe I can meet you downstairs on the sidewalk? There’s someone asleep in the apartment just now, so I—”
“Very good, sir. Down on the sidewalk in about ten minutes? Eight minutes?”
For a few seconds after he had hung up, Jack felt as if he had been dreaming. Very American voice, that had been, rather like an old man’s. Nevertheless, Jack thought it had been wise not to ask the fellow to come up to the apartment. There wouldn’t be any money in the wallet, but maybe there was a chance of everything else, unless this man, or someone who had found the wallet first, had decided to lift the credit cards too. Jack glanced at his watch. Nearly half past 7.
Jack got the blue jacket from the closet, and went downstairs. On the sidewalk, he shoved his hands into the back pockets of his levis, and glanced in both directions. A lanky black youth strode toward him and passed him. Two women together, three men walking separate from one another walked by without a glance at him. The minutes passed. Here came a middle-aged guy with a dog, behind him a rabbi all in black with a beard, walking briskly.
“Mr Sutherland?”
Jack hadn’t been looking at the man with the dog. At that instant, the streetlights came on, though it was still quite light.
“Yes, you are,” said the man who was as tall as Jack or taller. He had black and gray hair, alert dark eyes. “Well—” He shifted the dog’s leash from right hand to left, and reached into the pocket of his old but rather good tweed jacket. “This I think is yours?” He produced the wallet.
“Where’d you find it? Right here?”
“Yes, sir. An hour or so ago.”
Jack took the wallet, since the man was extending it, stuck his thumb hastily between its sides and saw the same chunk of new twenties, lifted a flap and saw the snapshots in their transparent envelope. And there was also the little clump of credit cards.
“Two hundred and sixty-three dollars,” said the man in his husky but precise voice. “I hope that’s right?”
Jack was smiling in dazed surprise. “Take your word for it. I’m—bowled over! May I offer you a hundred for your kindness?” Jack was ready to count the money out. The man looked as if the money might be welcome.
“No, sir!” said the stranger with a laugh, a shy wave of his hand. “Gives me pleasure. Not every day a man finds a wallet and can return it to the owner! I think it’s the first time in my life!” His smile showed a first molar missing.
Jack sized him up as a lonely bachelor, maybe eccentric. “But—when someone does a good turn like this—it’s only natural to want to say thanks somehow.”
“It’s only natural to return something you find, if you can find the loser. Don’t you think so?—That’s if we lived in a decent world.” Above his now faint smile, his dark brows frowned with earnestness.
Jack gave a laugh, and nodded agreement. “You won’t change your mind and buy a nice twenty-dollar steak for your dog?” Jack pulled out a twenty.
“God? He eats well enough, I think. Fresh meat most of the time and not this old fatty hamburger stuff for animals. Maybe he eats too much.” He tugged at the leash. “God, say hello to this gentleman.”
“His name’s God?” Jack asked, looking at the black and white dog who stood knee-high. The dog had ears that flopped forward, a tail with a curve, giving a pig-like impression, except that its nose was rather pointed.
“Dog spelt backwards, that’s all,” said the man. “I’m an atheist, by the way, so naturally I returned your wallet. I believe man makes his own destiny, his own heaven or hell on earth. For instance to spell God with a capital letter is ridiculous. There’re so many gods. Did you ever think how absurd it would be to see in the newspapers that the President had asked for Jupiter’s guidance? Or Thor’s maybe? Make you smile, wouldn’t it?”
Jack was smiling, uneasily.
“If we call our god God with a capital letter, makes you think we’ve run out of names, doesn’t it? Africans at least have all kinds of gods, each with a different name.” He chuckled.
A nut, Jack decided, sensing that the speech could go on all evening if he let it. Jack nodded. “You’ve got something there. Well—my thanks again to you. I really mean it.” Jack extended his hand.
The older man gripped it as if he enjoyed shaking hands. “A pleasure, sir.—You’re a journalist?”
Jack extricated his hand and edged toward his steps. “Sometimes. Free lance. Good night, sir, and thanks again.” Jack went up his front steps with his key already in hand. He had the feeling the man was watching him, but when he looked back as he closed the door, he saw the man walking eastward with his dog, not looking back at him at all.
Funny incident, Jack thought. You could never tell what might happen in New York!
He sat down at the writing table in the corner of the living-room, and took a closer look at the wallet. Amazing to have it all back! He glanced at the three snapshots first, then checked the credit cards—all there he was sure, and th
ere were four instead of three. He did not count the money, feeling sure every dollar was there. He returned to his cold supper with better appetite.
The TV was still on, and still uninteresting.
An odd man, the one with the dog named God. Jack had been about to ask his name, maybe what he did for a living, just to be friendly. Now Jack was glad that he hadn’t. The fellow could become a bore, in his well-meaning way, and he apparently lived in the neighborhood. It would be a funny story to tell Natalia.
Less than an hour later, Jack was laying out his work for tomorrow, or even for tonight if he felt so inclined. Besides Joel’s project, on which there was no deadline because Joel had no contract as yet, Jack had two book jackets to do, and they had deadlines about two weeks off. One was of a house front with three people at three different windows, a nineteenth-century house in New England; the other a scrambled scene of many people rushing, pushing, like a crowd coming out of a subway exit onto the street at 6 p.m. The editor had liked the preliminary sketches which he had posted from Philadelphia, and yesterday afternoon Jack had gone to the publishing house and they had decided on colors. Jack twiddled, dawdled, daydreamed, and experimented with the white he wanted for the housefront. White, pink and green it would be, with his pen line supplying the black and the outlines of the house. Tomorrow, with Amelia on his hands, he might not be able to work much. He disliked deadlines, preferred to think they weren’t there, and if he could sustain that illusion, he could turn in his work ahead of time.
He put on a Glen Gould cassette for background music, though in fact, he listened, part of his mind on the music, and part on the colors and lines before him and under his left hand. The trick was the delicate balance between dreaming and trying, Jack thought, feeling happier by the minute.
3
Jack peered over the throng claiming luggage. How could so many people have been on one bus? Where was Susanne’s long brown hair, her earnest face bending over Amelia who would be out of sight because she was so little?
“Take yer—”
“No, you won’t!” replied a wisp of a man, addressing a fellow who had been about to seize his suitcases with the promise of a taxi. The little man gripped a case in each hand and seemed prepared to use a foot to ward off the bigger fellow.
Jack had worked that morning, and had exercised on his hand-rings in the tall hall of the apartment. Again he wore levis and the blue jacket, with his wallet in the inside pocket now.
“Susanne!” Jack cried, lifting an arm.
“Hi, Jack!—Got one more—to wait for!” Susanne meant a suitcase.
“Hello, sweetie!” Jack picked up the little girl in blue jeans and T-shirt. She had long straight hair like her mother’s, only fairer.
“Hi, Daddy,” replied Amelia calmly. “Put me down.”
“You gained some weight.”
“I’m taller.” Amelia grabbed her small suitcase.
Jack relieved Susanne of a suitcase, and a knapsack he recognized as Amelia’s. “How’re things?”
“Everything’s okay. Fine.”
“Coming down to Grove with us or—”
“Well, not unless you need me, Jack. But if you do, I’ve got loads of time.” Susanne was twenty-two, serious and rather pretty, though she gave no attention to make-up. She lived with her parents in a roomy apartment on Riverside Drive.
“No-o,” said Jack. They were walking toward the taxis. “Thanks for straightening the place up this week.” Susanne had looked in at Grove before his arrival to dust and put a couple of things in the fridge. “Natalia still coming up tomorrow?”
“I suppose.” Susanne glanced at him with her easy smile, and brushed her long hair back from her face. “Didn’t hear anything different.”
If Jack needed Susanne for minding Amelia, or if he needed any shopping or cooking for “people in”, Susanne said she would be available. That was the arrangement they had had since more than a year with Susanne Bewley, graduate of NYU and now working on her thesis since ages, it seemed to Jack.
“You take this one!” Jack meant the first taxi. “I insist!” He put Susanne’s suitcase in for her. “We’ll be in touch. Thanks, Susanne.”
“Bye, sweetie! See you!” Susanne yelled to Amelia, as if to a kid sister.
Jack found another taxi at once.
“Glad to be in New York, Amelia?” Jack asked when they were rolling southward.
“Yes.” Amelia sat up straight, looking out the window. “I like travelling.”
“How’s your mom?”
“She’s okay. She’s playing golf and she’s—”
“Golf?” Jack laughed.
Amelia smiled too, showing baby teeth. There was a hint of knowing amusement in the smile, and the way she tossed her head to get her hair out of the way reminded him of Natalia. Natalia parted her hair on the right, Amelia on the left. “But you don’t have to play golf to go there,” she said.
Jack knew she meant the club. They were gliding past Twenty-third Street, down Seventh Avenue. “And Louis was there too?” Jack asked, not liking to ask it, but it would be the first and last question about Louis, he supposed.
“Oh, Louis wouldn’t go to the golf club!” Amelia replied with a giggle.
But he’s at the house, Jack wanted to say, and didn’t. Don’t quiz the servants, he remembered from his childhood, and it followed that one didn’t quiz the children either. Louis was always hanging around Natalia, like a permanent fact or feature. Louis Wannfeld had a house in Philadelphia, and an apartment in New York in the East 60s which he shared with his friend Bob. Louis was a stockbroker or investment advisor and also in real estate, professions Jack understood little about. Louis seemed to have endless time on his hands. Louis could sit up till 3 in the morning talking with Natalia in Ardmore, or in a supper club in New York, and like Natalia sleep the next morning to make up for it, Jack supposed. Since Louis was gay, Jack realized that he had no reason for jealousy, but he was still a bit jealous, now and then. What in God’s name did Natalia and Louis find to talk about from 10 in the evening until the wee hours? Why were they so attracted to each other? He’s my soulmate, Natalia had said, more than once. Did you ever want to marry him, Jack might have asked, but he hadn’t. Natalia would have replied, Jack was sure: And ruin everything?
And Amelia simply accepted Louis as she might an uncle she had inherited. And Louis in his way accepted Jack and Amelia, Jack knew, considering his own presence innocent and unassailable, Jack supposed, because Louis had been a friend of Natalia’s before she had met him, Jack.
They were turning west into Barrow Street to approach Grove, and Jack pulled his wallet out, mindful now of seeing that it got back into his inside pocket.
“I can carry it!” Amelia was saying about her suitcase, so Jack let her.
Upstairs, she announced, “I like this place!” as if she had never seen it before, though she had spent most of her life here. She walked from one end of the apartment to the other, and gazed out the front and back windows.
“Your room’s here. Remember?” Jack was installing her bigger suitcase on an Austrian chest of pale blue with a pink flower design painted on it.
The telephone rang.
“Probably for you,” Jack said. “Want to get it, Amelia?” He was hoping it was Natalia.
“Sutherland house,” said Amelia. “Oh-h, hi, Penny…Yep…Don’t know. I think so.”
Jack was summoned to agree to a meeting time and place for Penny and Amelia tomorrow at Penny’s mother’s house at a certain address in the East 80s. Jack wrote the address down in case it wasn’t in an address book here. At 11 o’clock.
“I’ll bring Amelia back around four,” said Penny’s mother. “Is Natalia there?”
“Due tomorrow,” said Jack.
Jack turned to his daughter after he had hung up. “Busy girl.” He hadn’t the faintest idea what Mrs Vernon, Penny’s mother, looked like, but he remembered Natalia mentioning her a couple of times. The kids knew eac
h other from Amelia’s school on West 12th Street. “What’re you two doing tomorrow?”
“It’s lots of us. Maybe four or five. Penny has some new video cassettes.—Can I have a bath?”
“Sure!”
Amelia wanted the blue pellets from the big glass jar tossed in, the bath salts Natalia sometimes used. Jack could smell its pleasant scent in the kitchen. To think I’ve helped create a miniature Natalia, he thought, smiling as he got the lunch ready. He set the white table with plain white plates, green napkins. Ham, potato salad, milk. Custard pie for dessert. Beside Amelia’s plate he laid a long slender object wrapped in red-striped paper.
Amelia reappeared in white shorts, topless and barefoot. She pronounced it hotter in New York than in Ardmore, but she liked the air. Jack laughed, but he knew what she meant.
“What’s this?” Amelia asked when she had sat down, picking up the present.
“For you. Open it.”
The child pulled the slender bow undone. Her blond hair, darkened around her face by her bath, was the dusty gold color of Natalia’s, her brows had the same unusual and unfeminine straightness and heaviness, but her mouth was rather like his, more slender than Natalia’s, more apt to move and change. It seemed to him that Amelia grew, or became a little different, every time he saw her, even if the interval were no more than two weeks, and this was another reason why Jack never tired of gazing at her.
“Ooh, a rec—recker!
“Recorder, honey. A real one. You can play something really pretty on that.”
Amelia was trying it, frowning with effort.
“Takes all your fingers, don’t forget. Nearly all. I’ve got a little book on it and I’ll show you later. Come on, let’s eat first.”
By dusk that day, Natalia had not telephoned, which augured well for her arrival tomorrow. Amelia had practised for nearly half an hour with her recorder and the booklet in her room, and the toots had not bothered Jack while he worked. Then to his surprise, Amelia had taken a long nap. She awoke hungry, but Jack persuaded her to postpone eating for half an hour, because he was inviting her out.