J. Donleavy - Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton

“Ma’am, I believe my telephone has been disconnected.”

“Oh dear. Not, I hope, for nonpayment of a bill. Well I’ll send you a telegram. But you know you have given me an awful lot to think about. And while I’m gone, I’ll think.”

A squeeze together of bodies. Kiss on the lips. Tip of her tongue darting to touch mine. Opening the gleaming black door on its shiny brass hinges. Walk down the four steps outside into the night, aglow in the gonads. The mayor doesn’t live far away. Knock on his door. Inquire if he’d like to commission a special mayorial New York City anthem to be sung at all official happenings. A celebratory cantata for the rich. And a special march with plenty of syncopated drumming to be played for the poor as he goes in the parade up Fifth Avenue on St. Patrick’s Day. But on the mayor’s doorstep, I’d be arrested as a nut. Better to turn left on East End Avenue. Start my long journey along the East River as rain begins to fall. Pass the Welfare Island Ferry Slip. Walk under the roaring traffic over the Queensborough Bridge to Queens. A panhandler ahead.

“Excuse me, sir. Would you have fifteen cents to have a cup of coffee and to get to Queens. To visit my dying mother in the hospital.”

“Here you are, friend.”

“Sir, you are a real gentleman.”

“At least a coin for a beer.”

Farther on now, cut west on Fifty-seventh Street. Get a look at least at all the windows of luxury along this stretch down Fifth Avenue where Dru pops in and out, shopping in these buildings whenever she has time between appointments. And she could give fifteen cents to several million panhandlers. Be called a gentlelady. But at this moment she’s somewhere warm and fed and not on the point of starvation. Arriving wet, sneezing and coughing and cold at a dump of an apartment in Pell Street.

In desperation, I paid a late-night visit to the forbidden family saloon in Hell’s Kitchen for a free roast beef sandwich two inches thick and then traveling north to meet her in the distant northern Bronx, borrowed money from my second-favorite sister in order to buy groceries. And on a depressingly gray grim rainy Monday early afternoon, returned to Pell Street laden with lamb’s kidneys, fruit, two cans of beans, bottle of sauerkraut, an eggplant and a small can of olive oil along with a pound of cod from the Fulton Fish Market. And now after days of desperation, learned that Dru had just returned from Montana. Which news came as I was opening the door to the apartment, to hear Fauré’s Requiem. For there seated inside in the living room, attired in her most sedate of finery, a suit of black raw silk, was Sylvia. And it was as if a flash of pain shot across my chest. Seeing her there, sitting back in the broken armchair, listening, with her marvelous legs crossed, black patent-leather low-heeled shoes on her feet. A black cloak lined in purple satin folded across the piano stool. Reminding that her elegance could vie with even the most chic of women in New York. And I waited for the words. Hey, you no good dirty Irish bastard, you went and fucked my adoptive mother behind my back. But her words came matter-of-factly and nearly cheerful.

“Hi, I got the landlord to let me in. You have a new lock.”

“That’s right, someone busted in.”

“Well, you’ve often enough heard me say I want to find my real mother.”

“Yes, I have heard you say that.”

“To know what her face is like when she’s smiling and when her face is sad.”

“Yes. I’ve heard you say that.”

“Well, I found her. I have her address. And I’m really truly sorry for what I did to the piano.”

“Well, someone repaired it. Only needs more tuning now.”

“I know. And it’s all paid for. I don’t know what overcame me. But I shouldn’t have done it. And I do owe you an apology. Which goes beyond the cut piano strings. Your minuet, maybe not brilliant, but I think it’s pretty good. I took a copy of the score and was going to tear it up but instead had it played. But now I’m here to ask you to do me a large favor, which you don’t have to even consider if you don’t want to.”

“What is it.”

“I want you to come with me to see my mother. I don’t want to go alone. She lives in Syracuse. There’s a train today at two o’clock out of Penn Station.”

“How did you know I’d be here.”

“Dru seems to know where you are all the time. At least I can take my dream now, and if it gets finally ripped to shreds, bury it. As for a father, and after what has been vaguely hinted of my mother, once a beauty queen, how can I ever dream that my father was anything much.”

“What does ‘much’ mean.”

“It means more, I guess. More than my mother. And I suppose if you come right down to it and dispose of all the bullshit in most people’s minds, it mostly means money. And since I don’t have much of that at the moment, I don’t guess I’m anything much myself. I exhausted all my girlfriends’ largesse, which wasn’t much, either. And leading them on, I compromised myself with a few ex-boyfriends. But I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you with your Irish Catholic morality, that making a living is no problem for a girl with my figure and looks in this town. But I don’t want you to strain your imagination or jump to conclusions. Dru of course, is back from Montana.”

Ominous news. Thought once when she was supposed to be in Montana that I caught her face looking up at the windows from across the street. Amazing what women will do to you and then present themselves again to apologize if they want you to do something for them. As she says she’ll pay the fare, I try to think of an excuse not to go. To have to sit a few hours on the train. Could fall asleep and say things like I did about wrong information at Princeton and instead say, hey, Dru, what a fantastic delicious fuck you are. But had already vowed that after the girl in the bus station, if it were in my province to do so, I would avoid if ever I could, to disappoint anyone. Even to giving the panhandler lurking under the Queensborough Bridge nearly my last dime which I knew would disappear down his throat in beer. But found another quarter and an Indian head and buffalo nickel in the corner of my dressing table drawer. I always find myself making sure the coin says “Liberty” on it. And on a quarter dollar, that it says “E Pluribus Unum.” An eagle in flight over three stars. And added up, it was thirty cents. And fifty cents was the biggest amount I ever got as a child to go visit the Museum of the American Indian. And now, to forgive this distraught girl her trespass against me. And find her alone in her vulnerable helplessness. My prick suddenly gone rigid. My face flushed with embarrassment. To suddenly have the most appallingly overwhelming desire to fuck Sylvia on the spot.

“Okay, I will go with you.”

“You don’t mind, do you, Stephen, changing your clothes.”

“What’s wrong with my clothes.”

“Nothing, except perhaps not entirely suitable for meeting my mother, whom I’ve never met and who doesn’t even know I’m coming. Would you mind wearing a white shirt and if you have some kind of old sort of striped school tie. That is, if your school ever had one.”

“Holy Christ.”

“Well just in case we were invited to stay to dinner or something. How do I know she doesn’t have someone like Gilbert looking down his nose as he has occasionally dared to do to me wearing something he considers too casual for the room he refers to as the drawing room.”

“What about the holes in the toes of my socks.”

“Well, you’re not taking off your shoes, I hope.”

It was as if all was en fête. Two smartly dressed people getting resentful looks heading around the corner of Pell Street into Mulberry where Sylvia had one of the family’s Pierce Arrows parked, with its special arms that adjusted downwards for elbows and footrests that adjusted upwards for your feet. The Triumphington chauffeur in tow, called Jimmy, and terrified, eyeing the passing pedestrian traffic in case someone tried to open up his locked car door and jump on him. But he was as safe as any of the big Mafia dons, who weren’t that far away, also with their big black limousines parked with their chauffeurs.