Under My Skin Page 26

  ‘And she was over here.’

  The Chief took a sip from his coffee and looked away and then looked back into Arthur’s eyes again.

  ‘They’re just kids, Arthur,’ and his voice was almost pleading for him to understand.

  ‘Arthur…’

  But Glassman held up his hand. He did not want to hear any more.

  21 Love Itself (24th December 2001)

  Angel n. – 1. A divine being who acts as a messenger of God. 2. Somebody who is beautiful and kind. 3. A picture of an angel as a human figure with wings. 4. A spirit that protects and offers guidance. 5. A member of the lowest order of angels in the medieval Christian celestial hierarchy, ranked below archangels.

  She taps the white cane and sings on the subway. Her voice is beautiful and she says, ‘Bless you’ when a coin falls into her cup. The song rises up between Bleecker and Spring Street and at first it only comes through in patches, in between the bang and rattle of the underground train. Her voice is lifted up and when she comes closer to us her face is black and lined with worry and age. But when she sings it is like something from a gospel choir or a schoolgirl on a June holiday afternoon. She sounds like Billie Holiday, or as Jack would have said, the one that didn’t make it in New York. Outside the brothers stand in a circle around a sparking fire in a barrel and warm themselves in the snow – and inside she sings in the crowded subway because it is still the one thing she does better than anyone she knows.

  The last words rise and seem to come from her small bursting heart and in the train people look away from her because she makes something inside all of us want to well up and cry – but she sings like a bird and there are no tears from her as she sings out the last line –

  ‘Merry Christmas… Everyone.’

  Arthur is quiet today. He got up early and then pulled back the curtains and crept back into bed. He took me in his arms and outside it was still snowing and it had been snowing all night. I still have that feeling around a new snowfall and with it, the city is all clean and quiet and bright. He wants to be outside today. So we put on our parkas and our mittens and hats. He wants to show me his favourite New York – and all the things that make this city his home.

  We call into Pips for breakfast and he orders pancakes and maple syrup and side orders of eggs and fries. I have never seen him eat food like that before. He is usually looking at labels and making sure everything is organic and free from pesticide. But today he has a real breakfast and then he buys a pretzel and we share it as we walk together on the street.

  He takes me to see the Statue of Liberty from Brooklyn Bridge and she is green and tall and standing there surrounded by boats and ice.

  ‘What do you think when you see her?’ he asks and I say, ‘Pride,’ and he smiles and says, ‘I think Hope.’ Then we go to the Metropolitan Museum and see the pencil sketches by van Gogh. We eat hotdogs for lunch on a bench in Central Park. And around us the dog-walkers make their way through a foot of snow and the ice skaters make slow smooth circles on the rink.

  ‘We need to buy the tree,’ he says and his nose and ears are red with cold. It is the kind of frosted air that makes your eyes stream and your head ache. ‘Then we might have dinner in Jules.’ He knows this is my favourite restaurant and that I love the beaded partitions and how the candles flicker when the door opens and another customer comes in. Then he says, ‘If we have time,’ and I don’t know what that means, so I go, ‘Of course we have time. We have all the time in the world.’

  The Christmas tree is more than six feet tall and we choose it together after a long debate. On the way back we push it and pull it and everyone laughs when we meet them on the street. We stand with it in the elevator and when the door opens no else can fit inside.

  There are pale blue baubles and some are see-through and others are white and gold. We attach each one carefully and neither of us says a word. Now and then he glances at the window and then he says, ‘It’s getting dark.’ He does not have a star and I tease him about this and instead he takes out a tired-looking angel with one wing and dried-out yellow hair. He smiles that smile he has, the one I will always remember seeing in the hardware store, and then he says, ‘May I?’ and he climbs the ladder and puts the angel up high.

  When the telephone rings he does not move to answer it and then when I reach for it, he frowns and says, ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Hi,’ he says and then there is a long silence as he lets the other person talk. Then he says, ‘OK. Four o’clock,’ and he puts the telephone down and now for some reason he won’t meet my eyes.

  ‘I have a surprise for you,’ he says slowly. ‘I want to take you to Gapstow Bridge.’

  And when he speaks he is already walking towards the closet for his coat. It is still bright outside but there are more snow clouds gathering over the skyscrapers and the Park.

  ‘We need to hurry,’ he says and he is still avoiding my eyes. All day he has been different and I go along with it and only ask, ‘We need to be at Jules for six, will we make it back?’

  ‘We’ll make it,’ he says.

  Central Park is almost empty. The last remaining people walk hurriedly towards the nearest gate. The trees stand like dark people with wild black hair and the lights are blinking on and there are still people laughing on the ice-rink. He walks quickly beside me, and then one hand reaches out for me and we hold mittened hands. We reach the bridge and it is silent and empty – a snow-covered stone bridge that curves romantically upward and then gently slopes back down again.

  The branches from the trees are white and ahead of us is the Chrysler building and a grey damp mist. The air feels thick with another snowfall and I’m feeling worried because it’s getting dark. Arthur stands for a moment on the bridge and looks into a deep copse of trees. He breathes slowly in and out and his blue eyes squint a little in the cold. Lately I have begun to see things about him and sometimes now he just seems… so… old.

  ‘I want you to wait here,’ he says.

  ‘Here? Why?’

  ‘Because – I want you to – don’t be afraid.’

  ‘But… I want you to stay with me.’ But he says nothing and just looks out over those dark trees.

  ‘Please,’ I tell him and he turns and looks right into my eyes and says simply, ‘I’m going to wait over here by the gate.’

  ‘But why can’t you wait here… Arthur… Arthur?’ and then he answers and with only one glance backwards.

  ‘I can’t.’

  Glassman did not wait at the gate as he promised. He saw the younger man approach before she did and with that he began to walk away. He would not think about her now and how beautiful her eyes were or how fresh her skin was in the cold. He would not think of how she had curled herself into him that morning and how he had clutched her and wondered how he would ever be crazy enough to let her go.

  ‘Let her decide,’ The Chief said. ‘She deserves to know.’

  A part of him had always known she was on loan to him and that one day she would return home to be with someone else. He had wanted her to love the city and somehow believed she would grow to love them both. As he walked out on to Fifth Avenue he was elbowed at the subway entrance as people rushed to make an early train. The wind lifted and like the other New Yorkers he bent a little and went on bravely, because they had no other choice but to face the cold.

  He told himself that he did not really care for her. That their connection had not gone below her lovely face. He would not think about her eyes now either and that unbearable fragility and then that surprising bright smile in between all sorts of pain. He would tell himself other things about her now and as the wind lifted mufflers and sucked at umbrellas, he would not turn around and see her, looking puzzled and covered in new snowflakes, because he knew he would fall in love with her all over again.

  When The Chief called he answered, ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes, it’s done,’ and The Chief made him promise to have Christmas with him. He said, ‘The holidays will be rough for everyo
ne this year,’ and he cleared his throat, and in the background Glassman could hear Maggie answer the front door and the sounds of laughing people coming in. And The Chief said gruffly over the noise of their visitors, ‘Arthur, you’re not on your own.’

  But when he sat on the floor of his sitting room and turned the Christmas tree lights on, Glassman felt his heart breaking and he wanted to call The Chief back and say, ‘Yes, I am, John. I am alone.’ He did not know how long he sat there for, but he seemed to wake sitting upright with his back to the wall. He wondered if any minute there would be a knock on his door or if the phone would ring – and he even wondered if he might find her waiting for him in Jules. So he waited and as the city grew quieter and quieter, the only sound was the switch on the wall which he kept pressing with his fingers and making the white Christmas tree lights flash off and on.

  He sighed then and looking up at the roof he reached the same decision he had reached when he met his good friend at the deli the night before.

  Glassman did not turn the bathroom light on. He walked towards the medical cabinet and felt for a new syringe and the bottle of morphine.

  ‘He has good veins.’ He remembered how a doctor had once praised him for that. And in his sickly state he had managed to feel some sense of pride.

  He avoided the hallway mirror and the one in the kitchen – and he threw a sweater over the one at the end of his bed. He took a deep breath and then calmly drawing the morphine into the syringe, he placed the cold needle against his skin.

  He noticed for the first time that the small green flowers on the wallpaper were in groups of three and then two and then one. ‘Three and then two and then one’ and he thought it was some kind of irony that was his life. Then he smiled at the idea of that. And how when a man dies he should have something more profound on his mind.

  ‘Here lies poor Glassman, he hated broccoli and eggs.’ She had even persuaded him to eat greenery. Now even his dull epitaph would not be safe.

  He liked to imagine that when his spirit lifted it would be transparent and invisible to the naked eye. That it would turn into glass and then some fine sparkling crystal and then shatter and send him into a million pieces across the Manhattan sky.

  ‘There goes Glassman,’ people would say, and outside, it would hardly be noticed that the snow for a moment had turned to hail. He wanted to feel that he was ready and that he could go – as he wanted to – without seeing himself in the mirror and knowing that the last face he saw was the face of Hope Swann.

  ‘A real beauty,’ he said to himself and his fingers tightened around the syringe and his thumb tensed a little, ready to push the needle in. He thought about the people he had loved in his life – his mother – Elsa Graham – Hope – The Chief – Trudy – and then he thought about Matilda whose face seemed to move towards him in the darkened room.

  ‘It would be just my luck to meet her in the next life as well,’ and even now his own words made him want to laugh. He managed to smile and at the same time he thought about Hope’s face again and wondered what she would have to say about all of this.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, Arthur?’ He could almost hear her voice.

  He swallowed slowly.

  His right hand relaxed its grip.

  He put the syringe back on the locker and sat up again.

  Whatever happened he knew now that she would come back to tell him. She was the kind of girl who would want a proper goodbye. She would be cold and hungry and she would like some spaghetti. And he knew how to make a good Pasta Putana now – amongst other things, she had also taught him that.

  It is cold on this bridge and I am thinking about Matilda and all the things she taught me about New York – the shutters shooting up on Broadway on a bright fall morning, ten different kinds of coffee from a paper cup, those ferocious red leaves and the yellow taxis, and yet she never once mentioned how beautiful and quiet it all gets in the snow. Yet that one line is the thing I remember most from her

  – One big love

  – One big love

  – One big love.

  And I just keep saying it as I wait here for Glassman to return to the bridge. In my mind I can see Jonathan and his fresh white shirt. I can see Arthur and then a man who lives on a boat. All these people, and why did I meet them? Did any of them come close to being ‘One Big Love’?

  Around me there are fewer and fewer people and the lights on the ice-rink are going off now one by one.

  And then I see a man on his own. He is coming towards me, just walking with his head down and his shoulders rounded into the wind.

  He is just like any other man in this city, wearing a coat and a muffler and gloves. His hands go deep into his pockets now and his ears are red with cold.

  The man walks past the last remaining people and he is walking towards the bridge and getting closer all the time.

  The sky over us is heavy with snow and it’s getting darker every minute now.

  – One big love

  – One big love

  – One big love.

  And then my heart seems to move a little, and then just open up inside – if he had fallen and broken into a million pieces I would have known how to put all those parts together again – one by one – and we have changed, both of us now – and we stand and stare at each other as he puts one foot on the bridge. There is a world of trouble in his eyes as he watches me and there is another world of trouble in mine and I wait as he takes one step closer and then a single snowflake falls between us and it is followed by another and another and then I look deeper into his dark eyes.

  There are so many things to talk about. There are too many things I have to say. I don’t know where to begin with it and in my mind I am already mixing up all the words. I look right into his eyes again and when he looks back, I see the beginning of his smile.

  And so I just say it – straight out – the same way I always say it.

  ‘Larry – when are you coming home?’

  Acknowledgements

  Patricia Deevy, my editor at Penguin Ireland, has been hugely helpful in the fine-tuning of this book. Sincere thanks also to Michael McLoughlin, Cliona Lewis and Brian Walker for helping to bring it all to life – and, as always, my agent, Faith O’Grady. Suzanne Costello, Deirdre Harrington and Juliet Prendergast read the earliest drafts and gave me much encouragement and advice. I would like to thank my family, Mum, Dad, and my brothers and sisters for their constant interest and support. My friends Melanie and Ardal O’Hanlon and also Nick Kelly did their best to help me with the title. While in New York I stayed with David Bourke and Geraldine Collins, who, apart from showing me the ‘ins and outs’ of this amazing city, were extraordinarily generous in giving me a place to stay and write. Finally, thank you, Steve Schwartz, for your help with the Cape Cod references – and for making me laugh.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Under My Skin

  ONE

  1 The Yum-Yum Girl (January 2001)

  2 1029 Prince Street – Manhattan

  3 The World of Us (February 2001)

  4 A Wedding in St Bart’s

  5 Elvis Has Left the Building (June 1991)

  6 Is This What I Get for Loving You?

  7 No Running No Jumping No Diving (December 1992)

  TWO

  8 Big Sky Country (February 2001)

  9 At the New York Public Library

  10 Sugar Boy (May 2001)

  11 Arthur and Marilyn

  12 Love, Loyalty and Friendship (September 2001)

  THREE

  13 The Last Man to Die

  14 The Falling Man (October 2001)

  15 Wellfleet, Cape Cod

  16 Where Are You, When You’re Not With Me?

  17 The Glass Heart (November 2001)

  18 Reason to Believe

  19 Between Lightning and Thunder (December 2001)

 
20 Please Do Not Disturb

  21 Love Itself (24th December 2001)

  Acknowledgements