Colum McCann - Thirteen Ways of Looking

He loves this, too, about Sally, the way every now and then she will burst forth with a word that he doesn’t expect. Venture indeed. Add venture, dear Sally. Upwards. Away.

He pauses on the lip of the first glass door, at the steps. A cold blast of air hits him as Tony hurries in to help.

— Young man.

— How are we today, Mr. Mendelssohn?

— Out to lunch.

His old joke. Guaranteed to bring a smile to Tony’s lips. It’s the repetition that makes it funnier: he says it almost every single day, rain, hail, shine. What would happen, one fine day, if he didn’t say it at all? The world would hardly stop spinning, but it might just hiccup a little on its axis. We Kan, we Kant.

— And who’s this lovely lady?

Tony the charmer. A beam from Sally. Yes, indeed, he loves that smile. It’s a good world, this, in its odd little moments.

— We just got married in the elevator, didn’t we, Sally?

— Yes, sir, we did.

— Hope you picked up all the confetti.

— Check the recycle bin.

— You’re very considerate, Mr. Mendelssohn.

It’s a high step down from the lobby into the street and getting higher every day. Feels like I’m lowering myself from a crane. Into the recyclables indeed. Maybe Katya and Elliot should hang handles along the length of Eighty-sixth Street: from the streetlamps, swinging along, like Johnny Weissmuller through the jungle, here we come.

— Careful now, says Tony. Can’t have the newlyweds crash.

There is still only a light dusting on the ground, but the storm is gathering force. Best get out and about now, quick and early. Who knows how long he might be housebound if it truly comes tumbling down?

He places the walking stick firmly on the ground, bends his weight into the leg. The creak of the knee. The rumble of the ankle. Here we go. Thank you, Sally. Doing just fine on my own.

Curious thing, the snow. They say the Eskimos have eighty words for it. An articulate lot. Slush and sleet and firn and grain. Hoar and rime. Crust crystal vapor blizzard graupel. Pendular permeable planar. Striated shear supercooled. Brittle glazed clustered coarse broken. An insult of snow, a slur of snow, a taunt of snow, a Walt Whitman snow, a bestiary snow, a calliope snow, it’s snowing in Morse code, three longs, a short, a long again, it’s snowing like the ancient art of the newspaper, it’s snowing like September dust coming down, it’s snowing like a Yankees Day parade, it’s snowing like an Eskimo song.

One step two steps three steps five. He stops for a moment at a muni-meter. God be with the days when you could park your carcass for a nickel, what do they cost now, two dollars for ten minutes, less, more? He watches a bus going past, chains on the tires. A woman on a bicycle. Good balance that. The shadow of death crossing to and fro. Careful, young lady. A minivan, beeping its way through the snow, perilously close to the cyclist.

The flashers flashing. The horn blaring. Good God, don’t hit her. Oh.

— That was close, Sally.

The hair on her chinny-chin-chin.

— Uh-huhn.

Sally too. There’s a market for that: a razor for elderly ladies. Eileen never had that problem. Smooth as silk.

He touches his hat and shuffles on. The trusty walking stick needed more than ever. A steel tip on the end. No sound from it today. Muffled.

— I’m building up an appetite, Sally.

— Yes, sir.

He pauses by the fire hydrant, to gather his breath. Can never see a fire hydrant without thinking of the September dust coming down ten years ago. All those young firemen going up the stairs. All intimately connected. A terrible day, he watched the collapse on television. For weeks afterwards every little thing was charged with meaning, even the dust on the windowsill, you were never quite sure what it might contain: a paper, a résumé, an eyelash.

— Sally, my dear, you are an angel.

— You’re out of breath, Mr. J.

— Just pretending, Sally.

He stands at the edge of the crosswalk. Why is it that the traffic lights are designed to humiliate us? Once he could get across from one side to the other without the little neon man flashing at all. These days he can only get halfway before the red man starts his antics. There is nothing he hates more than when the cars start to inch forward. Mendelssohn, your time is up. Goodbye, thank you, now sidle off to Florida. Or North Carolina. Down there the neon man lasts infinitely longer. It’s a known fact.

Here they go already, hooting and tooting. It never ceases to amaze him, how downright rude the city can be. Eight million lives colliding all at once. All those tiny little atoms in the process of bouncing off each other. Yes, yes, lady, you will have a chance to move your tush, but please just hush, and give me a chance to move my own.

One of the things he used to love about New York City was the sheer bravado of it all. It used you up, spat you out. But the more the years went on, the more he began to think that he’d like a little respect from it. He had, after all, put his time in. Sat on the bench. Went to party meetings. A Supreme Court justice. A fancy title, but in reality he got every case under the Brooklyn sun, a clearing house, really, for murders, mobsters, shysters, shucksters. The random stabbings. The premeditated takedowns. Probate matters. Injunctions. Rescissions. An endless ream of paperwork. He stayed within the system even at the worst of times. Never strayed. At half the salary he would have made if he had gone into corporate law. After all that he would have liked just a little ripple of thanks from the peanut gallery. A moment longer in the crosswalk, please. He put his career as a lawyer in the bin for a life of public service, and what did he get? Some fresh young tchotchke in a black SUV with New Jersey license plates looking as if she’d like nothing more than to flatten him in one fell swoop. Windshield wipers slapping back and forth. Her petulant glare. Her lip gloss shining. An ex-Juicy. Drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. Don’t think I don’t see you, young lady. Just because I’m going along here slow as molasses doesn’t mean that I’m not aware that you would very much like to put the pedal to the metal, scoop up poor Sally in the process, and drag us along Eighty-sixth Street, hanging to your bumper. A bit of respect, please. Objection sustained. There was a case he handled once of a kid from Bed-Stuy who was tied to the back of a garbage truck and dragged through the streets, he had been left lying on the ground for two hours afterwards, all the evidence was there but the jury wouldn’t convict. Rephrase. Move on. It was hard to leave a case like that behind. Haunted him for years. A young black boy, skidding along. Brutal days.

Who in the world designed those SUVs anyway? The ugliest damn things on the face of the earth. A big silver grille and a ram on the hood. As if they’re heading off to war. And why in the world are they needed anyway? It’s not as if she’s heading across the Rockies, flooding rivers and endless jungle.

— It’s always Jersey, Sally.

— Sir?

— It’s always a Jersey license plate.

— You take your sweet time, Mr. J. Don’t mind her. We can stay here until Sunday if we want.

— We might get snowed in.

How many mornings, noons, and nights have I walked up and down this street? How many footsteps along this same path? When I was young and nimble and slick I would dart across the road in the Dublin traffic, horse carriages, bicycles, milktrucks and all. Jaywalking. Jayshuffling it is, now. The jaybird. Mr. J., indeed. On the Upper East Side. A lot of volume in this life. Echoes too.

— Just fine.

Sally’s hand lies steady on his elbow now. Gripping rather hard into what is left of the muscle. The walking stick in his other hand, propping him up and propelling him along. And why is it that the mind can do anything it wants, yet the body won’t follow? What a wonderful thing it would be to live as a brain for a little while. To be perched in a jar and see it all from there. Without the rigors of the meshuggeneh mansion? A pure clean life. On a shelf. In a row of shelves. Not stuck out here, shambling in the snow, watching the red man flash and the New Jersey lady fume, and listening to her horn beep, and the whole of New York City build up behind her.