Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

“Pleasure to meet you,” he called over his shoulder.

He was humming a tune to himself. Sooner or later they all turn their backs. They all leave. That’s gospel. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. They all do.

Claire smiled and shrugged her shoulders. I could tell she wanted him to be someone better than what he was, that she must have married him for some good reason, and she wanted that reason to be on display, but it wasn’t, and he had dismissed me, and it was the last thing she wanted from him. Her cheeks were red.

“Give me a moment,” she said.

She went down the corridor. A mumble of voices from her bedroom. The faint sound of a bath running. Their voices raised and dipped. I was surprised when he emerged with her, just moments later. His face had softened: as if just being a moment with her had relaxed him, allowed him to be someone different. I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they’re the things that matter.

“I’m sorry to hear about your sons,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean to be so brusque.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ll excuse me?” he said.

He turned and then he said, with his gaze to the floor: “I miss my boy too sometimes.” And then he was gone.

I suppose I’ve always known that it’s hard to be just one person. The key is in the door and it can always be opened.

Claire stood there, beaming ear to ear.

“I’ll drop you home,” she said.

The thought of it flushed me with warmth but I said: “No, Claire, that’s all right. I’ll just get a taxi. Don’t you worry.”

“I’m going to drop you home,” she said, with a sudden clarity.

“Please, just take the slippers. I’ll get you a bag for your shoes. We’ve had a long day. We’ll take a car service.”

She rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a small phone book. I could hear the sound of the bath still running. The water pipes kicked in and there was a groan from the walls.

DARK HAD FALLEN OUTSIDE. The driver was waiting, propped, smoking a cigarette, against the hood of the car. He was one of those old-time drivers, with a peaked hat and a dark suit and a tie. He suddenly stubbed the cigarette out and ran to open the rear door for us. Claire slid in first. She was agile across the rear seat and she swung her legs across the well in the middle of the seats. The driver took my elbow and guided me inside. “There we go,” he said in a big false voice. I felt a little old-black-ladyish, but that was all right — he was just doing his best, wasn’t trying to make me feel bad.

I told him the address and he hesitated a moment, nodded, went around to the front of the car.

“Ladies,” he said.

We sat in silence. On the bridge she flicked a quick look back at the city. All was light — offices that looked as if they were hovering on the void, the random pools from street lamps, headlights flashing across our faces. Pale concrete pillars flashed by. Girders in strange shapes. Naked columns capped with steel beams. The sweep of the river below.

We crossed over into the Bronx, past shuttered bodegas and dogs in doorways. Fields of rubble. Twisted steel pipes. Slabs of broken masonry. We drove beyond railroad tracks and the flashing shadows of the underpass, through the fire-blown night.

Some figures lumbered along among the garbage cans and the piles of refuse.

Claire sat back.

“New York,” she sighed. “All these people. Did you ever wonder what keeps us going?”

A big smile went between us. Something that we knew about each other, that we’d be friends now, there wasn’t much could take it from us, we were on that road. I could lower her down into my life and she could probably survive it. And she could lower me into hers and I could rummage around. I reached across and held her hand. I had no fear now. I could taste a tincture of iron in my throat, like I had bitten my tongue and it had bled, but it was pleasing. The lights skittered by. I was reminded how, as a child, I used to drop flowers into large bottles of ink. The flowers would float on the surface for a moment and then the stem would get swamped, and then the petals, and they would bloom with dark.

There was a commotion outside the projects when we pulled up. Nobody even noticed our car. We glided up by the fence, shadowed by the overpass. The black steel beams were shimmying with streetlight. None of the women of the night were out, but a couple of girls in short skirts were huddled under the light in the entrance. One was leaning across the shoulder of another and sobbing.

I had no time for them, the hookers, never had. I didn’t hold any rancor for them nor any bleeding heart. They had their pimps and their white men who felt sorry for them. That was their life. They’d chosen it.

“Ma’am,” said the driver.

I still had my hand in Claire’s.

“Good night,” I said.

I opened the door, and just then I saw them come out, two darling little girls coming through the globes of lamplight.

I knew them. I had seen them before. They were the daughters of a hooker who lived two floors above me. I had kept myself away from all that. Years and years. I hadn’t let them near my life. I’d see their mother in the elevator, a child herself, pretty and vicious, and I’d stared straight ahead at the buttons.

The girls were being guided down the path by a man and a woman. Social workers, their pale skin shining, a scared look on their faces.

The girls were dressed in little pink dresses, with bows high on their chests. Their hair was done in beads. They wore plastic flip-flops on their feet. They were no more than two or three years old, like twins, but not twins. They were both smiling, which is strange now when I think back on it: they had had no idea what was happening and they looked a picture of health.

“Adorable,” said Claire, but I could hear the terror in her voice.

The social workers wore the straitjacket stare. They were pushing the kids along, trying to guide them through the remaining hookers. A cop car idled farther up the block. The onlookers were trying to wave to the little girls, to lean down and say something, maybe even gather them up in their arms, but the social workers kept pushing the women away.

Some things in life just become very clear and we don’t need a reason for them at all: I knew at that moment what I’d have to do.

“They’re taking them away?” said Claire.

“I suppose.”

“Where’ll they go?”

“Some institution somewhere.”

“But they’re so young.”

The kids were being bundled towards the back of the car. One of them had started crying. She was holding on to the antenna of the car and wouldn’t let go. The social worker tugged her, but the child hung on. The woman came around the side of the car and pried the child’s fingers off.

I stepped out. It didn’t seem to me that I was in the same body anymore. I had a quickness. I stepped off the pavement and onto the road. I was still in Claire’s slippers.

“Hold on,” I shouted.

I used to think it had all ended sometime long ago, that everything was wrapped up and gone. But nothing ends. If I live to be a hundred I’ll still be on that street.

“Hold on.”

Janice — she was the older of the two — let her fingers uncurl and reached out to me. Nothing felt better than that, not in a long time. The other one, Jazzlyn, was crying her eyes out. I looked over my shoulder to Claire, who was still in the backseat, her face shining under the dome light. She looked frightened and happy both.

“You know these kids?” said the cop.

I guess I said yes.

That’s what I finally said, as good a lie as any: “Yes.”