Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

— Yes, ma’am.

— I mean, they’re coming for breakfast.

— Yes, Mrs. Soderberg.

She runs her fingers along the dark wainscoting of the corridor. Dining? Did I really say dining? How could I say dining?

— You’ll make sure they’re welcome?

— Of course, ma’am.

— Four of them.

— Yes, Mrs. Soderberg.

Breathing into the handset. That fuzz of red mustache above his lip. Should have asked where he was from when he first started working. Rude not to.

— Anything else, ma’am?

Ruder to ask now.

— Melvyn? The correct elevator.

— Of course, ma’am.

— Thank you.

She leans her head against the cool of the wall. She shouldn’t have said anything at all about a correct or incorrect elevator. A bushe , Solomon would have said. Melvyn’ll be down there, paralyzed, and then he’ll put them in the wrong one. The elevator there to your right, ladies. In you go. She feels a flush of shame to her cheeks. But she used the word dining , didn’t she? He’ll hardly mistake that. Dining for breakfast. Oh, my.

The overexamined life, Claire, it’s not worth living.

She allows herself a smile and goes back along the corridor to the living room. Flowers in place. Sun bouncing off the white furniture. The Miró print above the couch. The ashtrays placed at strategic points. Hope they won’t smoke inside. Solomon hates smoking. But they all smoke, even her. It’s the smell that gets to him. The afterburn. Ah, well. Maybe she’ll join them anyway, puff away, that little chimney, that small holocaust. Terrible word. Never heard it as a child. She was raised Presbyterian. A small scandal when she married. Her father’s booming voice. He’s a what? A yoohoo? From New England? And poor Solomon, hands clasped behind his back, staring out the window, adjusting his tie, staying quiet, enduring the abuse. But they still took Joshua to Florida, to the shores of Lochloosa Lake, every summer. Walking through the mango groves, all three holding hands, Joshua in the middle, one two three weeeeee.

It was there in the mansion that Joshua learned to play the piano. Five years old. He sat on the wooden stool, slid his fingers up and down the keys. When they got back to the city they arranged lessons in the basement of the Whitney. Recitals in a bow tie. His little blue blazer with gold buttons. Hair parted to the left. He used to love to press the gold pedal with his foot. Said he wanted to drive the piano all the way home. Vroom vroom. They bought him a Steinway for his birthday and at the age of eight he was playing Chopin before dinnertime. Cocktails in hand, they settled on the couch and listened.

Good days, they come around the oddest corners.

She grabs her hidden cigarettes from under the lid of the piano chair and walks to the rear of the apartment, swings open the heavy back door. Used to be the maid’s entrance. Long ago, when there was such a thing: maids and entrances. Up the rear stairs. She is the only one in the building who ever uses the roof. Shoves open the fire door. No alarm. The blast of heat from the dark rooftop. The co-op board has been trying for years to put a deck up on the roof but Solomon complained. Doesn’t want footsteps above him. Nor smokers. A stickler for that. Hates the smell. Solomon. Good, sweet man. Even in his straitjacket.

She stands in the doorway and drags deep, tosses a little cloud of smoke to the sky. The benefit of a top-floor. She refuses to call it a penthouse. Something leering about that. Something glossy and magazine-y She has arranged a little row of flowerpots on the black tarmac of the roof, in the shade of the wall. More trouble than they’re worth sometimes, but she likes to greet them in the mornings. Floribundas and a couple of straggly hybrid teas.

She bends down to the row of pots. A little yellow spot on the leaves. Struggling through the summer. She taps the ash at her feet. A pleasant breeze from the east. The whiff of the river. The television suggested yesterday a slight chance of rain. No sign. A few clouds, that’s all. How is it they fill, the clouds? Such a small miracle, rain. It rains on the living and the dead, Mama, only the dead have better umbrellas. Perhaps we will drag our chairs up here, all four of us, no, five, and raise our faces to the sun. In the summer quiet. Just be. Joshua liked the Beatles, used to listen to them in his room, you could hear the noise even through the big headphones he loved. Let it be. Silly song, really. You let it be, it returns. There’s the truth. You let it be, it drags you to the ground. You let it be, it crawls up your walls.

She pulls again on the cigarette and looks over the wall. A momentary vertigo. The creek of yellow taxis along the street, the crawl of green in the median of the avenue, the saplings just planted.

Nothing much happening on Park. Everyone gone to their summer homes. Solomon, dead against. City boy. Likes his late hours. Even in summertime. His kiss this morning made me feel good. And his cologne smell. Same as Joshua’s. Oh, the day Joshua first shaved! Oh, the day! Covered himself in foam. So very careful with the razor. Made an avenue through the cheek, but nicked himself on the neck. Tore off a tiny piece of his Daddy’s Wall Street Journal. Licked it and pasted it to the wound. The business page clotting his blood. Walked around with the paper on his neck for an hour. He had to wet it to get it off. She had stood at the bathroom door, smiling. My big tall boy, shaving. Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward.

No newspapers big enough to paste him back together in Saigon.

She takes another long haul, lets the smoke settle in her lungs — she has heard somewhere that cigarettes are good for grief. One long drag and you forget how to cry. The body too busy dealing with the poison. No wonder they gave them out free to the soliders. Lucky Strikes.

She spies a black woman on the corner, turning away. Tall and bosom-burdened. Wearing a flowery dress. Perhaps Gloria. But all alone. A housekeeper, probably. You never know. She would love to run downstairs and go to the corner and scoop her up, Gloria, her favorite of them all, gather her in her arms, bring her back, sit her down, make her coffee, talk and laugh and whisper and belong with her, just belong. That’s all she wants. Our little club. Our little interruption. Dearest Gloria. Up there in her high-rise every night and day. How in the world did she live in such a place? The chainlink fences. The whirling litter. The terrible stench. All those young girls outside selling their bodies. Looking like they would fall on their backs and use their spines as mattresses. And the fires in the sky — they should call it Dresden and be finished with it.

Perhaps she could hire Gloria. Bring her in. Odd jobs around the house. The bits and pieces. They could sit at the kitchen table together and while away the days, make a secret gin and tonic or two, and let the hours just drift, her and Gloria, at ease, at joy, yes, Gloria, in excelsis deo.

Down on the street, the woman turns the corner and away.

Claire stamps out the cigarette and totters back toward the roof door. A little dizzy. The world shifted sideways for an instant. Down the stairs, head spinning. Joshua never smoked. Maybe on his way to heaven he asked for one. Here’s my thumb and here’s my leg and here’s my throat and here’s my heart and here’s one lung and, hey, let’s bring them all together for a final Lucky Strike.

Back inside, through the maid’s entrance, she hears the clock in the living room striking time.

To the kitchen.