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

Sylvia putting her black-gloved hands up to her face. The towns going by. The conductor punching tickets, reciting off their names. Rome, Utica, Schenectady. This was America. A vast land of the brave and the free. Free country to be rich in. Free for a goddamn sight of a whole lot more to be poor. Free for anybody to tell you to go to hell. And sometimes, like a few of the Mafia kids I played with growing up, they were friendly till you told them to go to hell, and you always knew they’d wait patiently till it was a good time to try to kill you for it. And that’s why if you were Irish you would always try to wade in swinging and kill them first on the spot. And Sylvia was told to go to hell. And had already to stand as she did, waiting till that train went by. And then stood for just those few seconds, for someone to spit in her face. A door slamming, to leave her so utterly forlorn on the landing of her mother’s slatternly abode. A child who sought the loins she came from. To be with that flesh again. To touch it. To take her hand. Be held close. Be comforted in her skirts. And all dressed up to be desecrated. Told to go away. Never to come back. Another soul shot down in cold blood. Wrong and terrible information is being given out at Syracuse.

“Albany next. Albany next.

All get off for Albany.” The conductor singing out up and down the carriages. Till we stop and wait in the station. In the hiss and throb and steam of the trains. Then head out of this capital of New York State and towards the majestically flowing river. As the rain streaks by across the window. So much beautiful passing countryside passing. Then through the towns and the grim industrialization, the factories and the rail sidings. That road in Syracuse. Potholed. Strewn with debris. Will now have a surprise to be found in a Tiffany box. A loving cup. Maybe the taxi driver who saw it, will go back to see. And read engraved on the silver:

To my dearest mother

Annie

From her loving daughter

Sylvia

And where in the same city of Syracuse there’s a university where my closest childhood friend, who hunted and trapped and explored the lore of wildernesses and who was killed in the war, had planned to go to study forestry. He taught me Indian games of swinging down to the ground from the tops of sapling trees. He knew how to tie knots and make and follow trails through the woods. He’d give me a ten minutes head start and track me to anywhere I would try to hide. Another life ended that promised so much. To inspire another generation. And his memory kept me alive to the wonderful principles he practiced. In all matters but girls. All of whom sought his company and loved him. And not till we reached Poughkeepsie did Sylvia again speak.

“I’m so exhausted. And feel so alone. And I am so, so shamed.”

To reach now to take her hand to comfort her. Wrap my fingers around her fingers just tightening for a moment until she gently drew her hand away. Her indifference to me confirmed and supreme. And my consolation proffered rejected. But when I insisted that I go back with her to the apartment at Sutton Place, she didn’t demur. Said she wanted to collect something. Something that was all that was left of her life. She disappeared to her bedroom, while Gilbert, as if for my benefit alone, announced that Mrs. Triumphington was out. When Sylvia returned, she sat and smoked a cigarette and asked Gilbert to make her a daiquiri. And I asked for a beer. More than anything I wanted to go into the music room and strum out some Beethoven. Feel and listen to the notes tumble soft and tenderly upon each other. But sat there where we’d all sat before. Noticing now the same tulip glasses for candlesticks that were on Dru’s friend’s chimneypiece. Christ, a diamondback rattler could come squirming out right now from under this sofa. Where sits so near the body which once presented so many agonizing jealousies. She who through all those years of childhood suffered a desperate nagging mystery in her rich life. Searching everywhere for a mother to rid herself of the emptiness she felt inside her.

“Stephen. Thank you for coming with me. I suppose I’ve discarded guys like you all my life and I guess I should have discarded you a month or two sooner than a month or two later. But I didn’t. I guess only because at least you’re an artist doing something that has value. Anyway. I’m going to give you a divorce. Of practically the cheapest kind it is possible to get. And forgive me if I now drink my daiquiri in one gulp. I’m going. I presume you’re staying. You don’t have to pretend. I know all about it.”

“About what.”

“I said you don’t have to pretend. I’m going if you’re staying.”

“I’m not staying.”

“Okay then, let’s save electricity on the elevator and both go. But don’t you ever say anything to anybody ever about what happened today. And don’t watch me as if I were going to fall in front of a truck or jump out of a window.”

Back on the street, it was still raining. The doorman running out under an umbrella to get a taxi. Sylvia with a much-worn gladstone bag, put out her hand for me to shake.

“So long, Stephen.”

“Sylvia. I’d like to at least know where you’re going.”

“What the hell do you care. If someone doesn’t love you, it doesn’t matter where you’re going. But I’m going somewhere. Where to have no one who loves you, it doesn’t matter. This bag belonged to my real father and I don’t even know who he is. Good-bye. Anyway, free of me, nothing should stop you now maestro from fucking my pretend mother all you want.”

Most of all, I didn’t want her to go anywhere it could be cold and winds make her shiver. Or loneliness make her silent and more alone. Her silhouette through the rain-spattered back window of the taxi, telling the driver where to go. Wait in case she turns around to wave and I can wave back. But the cab pulling away, the shadow of her head hunched forward. The leather of the gladstone bag with the initials J.C.H.D., was creased and cracked with wear. Whoever owned it at least had some pretensions to elegance. And it is a cruel thought, but I hope that, Holy Christ Almighty, she doesn’t go off now searching for her father.

Next morning at eight o’clock in Pell Street waking to the eccentric alarm clock. Which at first seemed to be an insistent ring of the downstairs doorbell. But couldn’t be, because the buzzer in the apartment didn’t work. But it was a dream and a nightmare so real that I woke in a sweat. Having dreamt of Sylvia’s death and burial and that I had gone down to the front door where a policeman standing there asked if I were Stephen O’Kelly’O. And informing me that Sylvia fell from a Biltmore Hotel window, and her remains were removed to Bellevue Hospital morgue where if I could make a positive identification, I could collect my wife’s effects. I kept asking the policeman at the door did it really happen. And it seemed that he said all the guys from the “Men Only” bar rushed out to see her broken body on the sidewalk where she landed in front of the phony blind musician who so outraged Max. And then in the morgue I was asking was that really her body on the slab looking astonishingly beautiful and uninjured. And I found myself thinking that although she bitched at me and had her own independent agenda which meant, Go fuck yourself if you want me to do anything for you, that perhaps she wasn’t such a bad old skin.

Not much lifted in spirits, Stephen O’Kelly’O sitting this day watching out the window the traffic of Pell Street. Where the motor vehicles slowly cruise past looking for space to park. Old habitués go by with whom no word is spoken but whose faces have become familiar to know. This is now my lonely home. A percolator bubbling. A hot cup of coffee in my hand and munching on crumb cake and a Danish pastry. Wearing a dressing robe, a birthday present from Sylvia, that once jeering sneering voice which finally took on a kindly sound and now is vanished. And a day unfolds when everything looks so solemn that a deep deep gloom hovers into Pell Street. Despite all the kindnesses, forgiveness, friendship, and consideration that is felt and shown to others, still you wonder what bad things there are that the world will do to you next. There goes by down in the street a familiar Oriental gentleman of noble mien, pushing his barrow loaded with boxes and a Caucasian son of a bitch in an automobile behind him blowing his horn. The story of America told in one simple message. Get the fuck out of my way I am in a goddamn hurry. Just like the guy in the bus station who was telling everyone wrong information is being given out at Princeton.