“No, actually, that's a good question,” says Doug, answering both Mom and the snort. “The full moon is the worst. Emergency rooms are always extremely frenetic the night of a full moon. I don't know how to explain it scientifically, but the empirical evidence is fairly convincing. What's easier to account for is that sick children, particularly from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, tend to be brought to the emergency room after eleven p.m.”
Mom looks happily perplexed. “And why is that?”
“Because that's when prime-time television ends.”
“The children wait until after prime time to get sick?”
“I believe,” Dad says, “Brooke's, uh, friend means that the parents wait until after their favorite shows before bringing the kids in.”
“That's dreadful.” Mom turns to Doug. “Is that true?”
Doug nods sadly.
“The worst are the self-mutilators,” says Brooke, rising out of her marijuana-induced stupor to do a brief promotional spot for her beau. “Can you imagine having a ward full of desperately ill and injured people to tend to, and having to spend two hours on some guy who, tell them about the thing yesterday …”
“Well,” says Doug, “I wish I could say it was a unique case, but in fact we've seen it before. A patient arrived on the ward yesterday under his own power, clutching a towel to his groin. We estimate he lost more than thirty percent of his blood.”
“Don't tell me,” says Dad.
“Fortunately, I guess, he hadn't fully severed his penis. He seems to have lost—”
“Stop!” Dad shouts. “Is this any kind of dinner-table conversation?”
I don't know, I think I agree with my father, although I can't help feeling a twinge of sympathy for Doug, the outsider.
“Doug,” says Mom, “are you sure you wouldn't like a teeny bit of Champagne?”
More Beverage Notes
One factor that Frank Prial doesn't take into account about holiday potables is their combustibility. When long-separated members of the same family are soaked in spirits and rubbed together, explosions almost inevitably result. This year it happens after I ask Mom how she met Dad. It's a story I haven't heard in years, certainly never with the kind of vivid dramatic detail she gives it this afternoon.
Boy Meets Girl, Spring 1955
“We used to think Williams boys were so square,” she says, the stem of her Champagne flute pinched lightly between age-spotted pointer and thumb. “And, of course, they were.”
A curmudgeonly harrumph from my father, still dressed in the square-college-boy uniform of his youth—blue blazer, blue oxford button-down shirt and regimental tie, his pink-pickled face unlined by the tussles of commerce or metaphysics.
“We used to think Bennington girls were artsy-fartsy dykes,” counters the former captain of the debating team.
“And the Williams boys were so very tolerant of diversity,” Mom continues, winking at us. “But we had to admit they were very good-looking.” She smiles sweetly at my father. Beneath the sun-and-nicotine-cured skin, she is still girlish, pale blue eyes childishly bright, her hair long, just as she wore it at Bennington, the gold now ghosted with silver. “I drove down with Cassie Reymond and some other girls. Cassie was an actress, and she went to New York, and last I heard she was married to that actor who was in that wonderful play—what was it called—about the, it wasn't with Richard Burton but somebody like that?” She looks hopefully at my father, who coughs impatiently into his hand.
“Camelot?” proposes Doug.
Oh, do shut up, Doug.
Beside us, a Japanese family: father, mother, two solemn preteen daughters in severe white blouses and pageboy haircuts.
“Anyway, we got there, and it was awful, all these fierce, shy, hungry boys in their nice J. Press suits and their crewcuts, ready to pounce. We drove down in Cassie's car, thank God, but there was a bus that arrived from Smith or somewhere like that, someplace frilly and proper, maybe Holyoke, I don't know. Anyway, this bus came in just as we pulled up, and the boys were waiting outside it. They'd formed a kind of gauntlet, or gamut. What is it? I can never get those two things straight. Is ‘gauntlet’ the glove you throw down when you challenge somebody to a duel, or is that ‘gamut’? Anyway, this was the other one.”
“‘Gantlet’ is actually the word you're looking for,” says Doug. “I think,” he hedges, for modesty's sake.
Here at the St. Regis they serve the fancy, lumpy kind of cranberry sauce with real berries, but I prefer the cheap, jellied kind. I seem to be the only one paying any attention at all to the food.
“Toward the end of the dance I spotted your father hovering. He was dressed exactly the way he is now. Could that be the same tie?” My father looks down at the neckwear in question, pennon of some lost regiment of the King's Army, and shakes his head. “He was kind of cute square,” Mom continues. “And, oh, I remember—he was wearing white bucks.”
“Not I,” said my father, but I could see he was starting to enjoy this. “Tan bucks, maybe.”
“You were. That was almost the cutest part about you, your nervous white feet. He kept circling us, getting a tiny bit closer each time, all nonchalant and pretending not to notice me. Well, he panicked when they announced the last song—I think it was ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.’”
My mother breaks off her narrative to warble a bar: “‘They asked me how I knew my true love was true …’”
“What's the matter with you?” my father demands, noticing my suddenly crumpled demeanor. Philomena and I used to love that song in its Bryan Ferry version.
“And when another boy asked me to dance,” Mom resumes, “his face just collapsed.”
My father snorts in disapproval. “Oh, come on.”
“Well, after it ended, I dragged my feet on the way out. If I'd walked any slower I think I would have taken root in the pavement, and I was just about to give up on him when I felt a hand on my shoulder in the parking lot.”
“What'd he say,” asks Brooke.
“He asked me if I wanted a tour of the campus.”
Brooke hoots with laughter. “At least he didn't ask you to see his etchings.”
The Japanese family aim their solemn dark eyes at the strange, noisy gaijin. “I didn't say that,” Dad insists.
“Well, I didn't really need to see the campus, but I told him I'd love to go somewhere where we could talk. So we ended up sitting in his roommate's Buick. And of course the talking led to kissing. I thought he was just a wonderful kisser, and after about ten minutes I realized he was just in agony, so of course I wanted to help him. It seemed like the least I could do.”
“Lillie!”
“And the poor sweet boy was so grateful he proposed to me right there in the back of that Buick.”
“What?” Brooke blurts. “You gave him a blow job?”
“Young lady!”
“Well,” says Mom, “I just, you know, used my hand.”
Dad Demurs
“This is not family conversation!” Dad thumps the table with his fist, making shimmery waves on our beverages.
“You got a proposal out of a hand job?” Brooke is impressed, Doug is nonplussed.
I am thinking back on a time when Philomena and I were still mad for each other and she gave me a hand job in a cab. Why didn't I propose to her then? Why didn't I ever? If only I had, she would be here now, having Thanksgiving dinner, comparing notes on post-ejaculatory proposals with my mom.
Word from Ralston
My phone rings. My caller ID shows an incoming call from Los Angeles. “Hello?”
“Hello, could I please speak to Collin McNab?”
“You can and you are.”
“What?”
“This is Collin McNab.”
“Oh, this is Cherie Smith. Chip Ralston's assistant? Hello? What was that noise?”
“Nothing, really,” I say as I write down the number. “It was probably a gasp of disbelief.”
“Oh. Well, Chip j
ust wanted me to tell you that he's changed his mind about the article. He doesn't want to do it after all.”
“Wait just a New York minute. We had an agreement.”
“I'm sorry. I don't know anything about that. He just told me to tell you, is all.”
“Let me talk to him,” I say. It's not that I'm dying to write a fucking article about Chip fucking Ralston, but I don't have enough money in my checking account to pay my half of the rent next month, let alone Philomena's.
“I'm sorry, but he's very busy right now. I'm sure it's nothing personal. Well, have a really nice day. Bye.”
I'm not going to give up that easily. I wait fifteen minutes, then call the number I'd written down.
“Hello?”
I am stunned silent.
“Hello,” says the familiar voice again. “Who is this?”
“Phil?”
“Collin?”
“What the … what are you doing there?” I demand, but the answer seems obvious enough, if somewhat incredible.
“How did you—”
“Jesus. I can't believe this is happening.”
“I … didn't want to hurt your feelings,” she says.
“You didn't want to hurt my feelings. So. That's why you're fucking Chip Ralston? To spare my feelings? What would you do if you actually wanted to hurt me and crush my spirit beyond repair?”
“I mean, that's why I didn't want you to know.”
“And that's why he blew me off for the stupid fucking interview?”
“Well, you could hardly write objectively about him under the circumstances.”
“I thought you were in Montana.” I think I'm hoping that if I find a hole in her story, an inconsistency, the whole thing will turn out to be a joke.
“We were.”
“We were.”
“I'm going back up there in a few days.”
“It must be just lovely.”
“I told you I wanted a simpler life.”
“Simpler life? You're moving to Livingston fucking Montana with Chip fucking Ralston. Do you have any idea what a cliché that is? I've got it in my computer. Control MONTANA CLICHÉ. It's not simple. It's just … stupid.”
She is silent on the other end and, as for me, I can hardly speak. Finally I say, “This is a joke, right?”
“Collin, these things happen. You know? It's nobody's fault.”
“Chip Ralston?”
“I can understand your being upset.”
“It's pathetic.”
“Don't make me say things you don't want to hear.”
“That fucking midget,” I say, then slam down the phone and regret it immediately. Scooping up an Imari vase, Philomena's prized possession, I hurl it against the wall, where it shatters gratifyingly. We bought the vase on a trip to Kyoto, and I remember wondering what would happen to it, the first durable object we purchased together. Would we look at it ten, twenty years hence and remember? Afterward, we went back to the ryokan in the hills, where a deep cedar tub was steaming in anticipation of our arrival, and blue-and-white striped robes had been laid out on the black-bordered tatami mats. Would I go back to that time, if I could? Would I relive it all to this moment, with foreknowledge? Or would I drown the bitch right there in the tub?
Parting Words from the Editor-in-Chief
“Please hold for Jillian.”
I'd rather not, thanks.
“Whatever you did to alienate Chip Ralston and his people,” my editrix says by way of greeting, “I'm afraid it's rather the last straw. At any rate, I don't think your heart was ever in this enterprise. I'm sure you'll find a position more worthy of your, uh, talents elsewhere, yes? Well, I think that covers it.”
“What I did? The son of a bitch is fucking my girlfriend.”
“Well, I think that's very democratic of him. Droit du seigneur and all. Quite an honor.” She pauses to inhale. “You know, I keep thinking you've been hanging out for long enough—that you ought to be dry behind the ears by now. I kept waiting. Good-bye, Collin.”
One Week Later, Theater District
We are clustered around the side entrance of the Ed Sullivan Theater, on West Fifty-third Street, home of the Late Show with David Letterman. Two blue police barriers make a corridor from the curb to the stage door. A security man stands nearby while we press up against the barricades, autograph books clutched to our chests, stamping our cold feet. We don't mind the cold. We're fans, real fans, big fans. We are the biggest fans. As in “Hey, Clint, I'm your biggest fan.” (Most of us are, anyway, although one is an impostor.)
Clarence, for instance, with his huge, fur-hooded Army-surplus parka, his scholarly thick black glasses, has the unabashed air of a man engaged in an important pursuit: “I just got Brooke Shields, man. She's a real nice lady. Not like that Richard Chamberlain. Richard Chamberlain, he comes through here, he shakes your hand. That sucks, man. What I'm gonna do with a handshake?”
“Can't sell it,” says Charlie, an incongruously sane-looking gentleman in a Mets warmup jacket who is probably a plumber in Patchogue, Long Island, when he isn't here outside the Ed Sullivan Theater or in the lobby of NBC headquarters in Rockefeller Center. He and his friend Tony are armed with five-by-eight index cards and the squeaky-wheel, Me-Me-Me manners of born New Yorkers. If they can get three cards signed, they will sell two to a dealer.
Suddenly the throng goes taut and silent, a lovestruck jellyfish, as a shiny black stretch fins up to the curb and stops, its cargo invisible behind the smoked glass.
The stately, plump driver marches around and opens the door.
“Chip!” screams one of the photographers. “Over here!”
“Hey, Chip!”
“I'm your biggest fan, Chip.”
“How about an autograph, Chip?”
“Look over here! Smile!”
Chip hesitates, framed in the open door of the limo, before he launches himself toward the stage door, hunched over, his head retracted into the shell of his jacket, moving quickly, but not quickly enough to dodge me as I slide under the police barrier and cut him off.
“Hi, Chip, I'm Collin McNab.” Savoring for a nanosecond the infusion of fear in his much admired and, indeed, very striking, hazel eyes, I then nail him with a hard right jab, aimed at the bridge of the nose, that actually connects with his temple as he tries to duck away. Solid contact, nonetheless. Solid enough to hurt the shit out of my hand.
“I'm your biggest fuckin' fan, Chip,” I say as he wobbles and then sinks to his knees just as a security guard tackles me and smashes my face against the grainy concrete.
Good news, Clarence and Charlie: I see stars!
The Lemon Light
By the time my name is called, Brooke is waiting for me by the front desk at the Eighteenth Precinct. So is a reporter from the Post. A sallow man, ancient by newspaper standards—easily forty—he pushes back the bill of his cap, which bears the logo New York—It Ain't Over, and flips open his steno pad.
“Why'd you do it?” he asks as I finish signing at the desk.
“I didn't like his acting choices.”
“Is it true you've been stalking Chip Ralston for months?”
Brooke takes my arm as we bolt for the door. Outside, we are ambushed by three photographers.
“Collin, look here.”
“Is that your girlfriend?”
“How about the two of you kissing for a picture?”
They follow us down the street, yipping and snapping. So this is what it's like, I think.
Finally we are alone and anonymous again on the sidewalk. The next day the Post will run a photo of me and Brooke, who is identified, half correctly, as my girlfriend.
“So,” Brooke says. “What do you want to do? Go to Rockefeller Center and watch the skaters?” For some reason I find this hilarious. “Then maybe check out the windows at Saks.” She's laughing now.
“Catch the Christmas show at Radio City,” I suggest.
“I don't know if they let felons in
to see the Rockettes.” Brooke's demeanor turns earnest. “Maybe if we act like we just got off the bus and it's our first day ever in the city, and we've come from really far away to see the lights on Fifth Avenue and the tree …” She shrugs, takes my hand and begins to lead me east on Fiftieth.
And, walking through the slanting secondhand light toward Rockefeller Center and Fifth Avenue, I remember that the city used to seem to me like a giant advent calendar with a thousand doors. Prowling the streets at night, you felt that every luminous tower was a glittering enigma that might secretly bear your name. I remember the joy, not so very long ago, of waking up newly arrived in the city, believing that everything I wanted in the world was waiting outside the door of my apartment, right down the street. Just around the next corner, or the one after.
1995
I Love You, Honey
1.
The first time it happened, Liam blamed the terrorists. He assumed that his wife, like all the other sentient residents of the city, was traumatized by the events of that September day. Deciding that this was no world into which to bring another child was a perfectly rational response, though he knew many people who'd had the exact opposite response. This, too, was understandable: affirming life in the face of so much death. He could name several children who were born nine months later, and he assumed there were hundreds, maybe thousands, more around the city—in fact, he'd read something to that effect. But Lora's was the opposite response. He didn't really begin to suspect until much later that her motives might have been more complex, less cosmic and more personal, than he had imagined.
2.
Her friend LuAnne had called to say something had happened, and she'd started surfing channels with the remote in one hand and the phone in the other, seeing the same image on all the stations. She called Liam at work and his assistant said he had a meeting scheduled out of the office. Lora then tried his cell, but the call went directly to voice mail. She kept punching the redial button every few minutes. After the second plane hit, she called the office again to ask where, exactly, the meeting was, frantic with worry, trying to remember if Liam had ever mentioned any business in the World Trade Center, but now she got the assistant's recorded message. In fact, Liam's office was in TriBeCa, only seven or eight blocks from the towers, and after the first one collapsed, she could imagine any number of scenarios that might have put him in harm's way. After the second tower fell, she was convinced he was dead. And then he called, his greeting incongruously blithe.