Part 24 (2/2)
”You dropped your bags,” I said, holding up the Bergdorf's and Barney's bags with a sudden humble but loud goodwill. ”I'm going to leave them here by the door, okay?”
”Oh-” Julianna started.
”Frank, you were going to let me into my apartment, remember? I am so sorry, I locked myself out. So stupid. What a great apartment you have, it's so pretty, I didn't at all mean to barge in, I just, Frank was going to help me with my keys and then your daughter fainted.” I reached out and grabbed Frank's arm, to get him to move. With a quick, sharp shrug he pushed me aside, but at least it got him going. He strode past Hideous Mother, and me, with every shred of Latin American pride that was left in him and his uniform. As he clearly wasn't going to pause, I scurried along. He did not give himself permission to look back even when Julianna called after him.
”Thank you, Frank, thank you!”
”If you want to thank him so much, I don't know why you wouldn't let me tip him,” Mrs. Gideon admonished her, behind our exit. ”Honestly, Julianna, your affectations have gotten completely-” The door slammed her voice shut. Frank was at the elevator now, pressing the b.u.t.ton with a fierce and uncompromising rage. Blessedly, it was right there, and we didn't have to wait. We both stepped into the elevator, and I hit 8. Frank hit L. We traveled in silence for a moment.
”Boy,” I finally said. ”What a witch.”
”Hopeless,” he whispered. ”Hopeless.” He sagged then, leaning against the paneled wall as if it were the only way he could continue to stand. When the elevator dinged for my floor, I reached over and pulled him up, put his arm over my shoulder, and half carried, half walked him out at my landing. Then I let us into my apartment, using his keys.
He was mumbling to himself, some sort of protest, I think, but my Spanish is not all that good when someone talks fast. It sounded sort of like, you have to let me go I have to get downstairs and do my job, but it could just as easily have been a grocery list. In any case he was in no condition to face anyone down in the lobby, much less that crowd of howling society reporters who were most certainly still on the premises. So I shut the door behind us and pushed him into my sweet empty enormous front room, propping him up against one of the windows that have the really good view of the park.
”Here, wait here, Frank, I'm going to get you something to drink, okay?” I said. He just kept talking to himself. I headed for the kitchen, where I knew there was a nearly full bottle of vodka stashed in the freezer.
As I raced through the little TV room, a head popped up off the couch. ”Hey, you're home,” said Jennifer as she cheerfully set down a mystery novel. I had forgotten that she was planning to show up, so her sudden appearance sent my heart rate through the roof.
”Oh, Jennifer,” I said, holding my hand to my chest in an attempt not to die from the scare she gave me. ”Oh.”
”You told me to come,” she reminded me, a little worried now.
”No, I'm really glad you're here,” I said. ”Oh. Really glad.” And I was. Even though my heart was still racing, it was not lost on me that finally, maybe, I had an ally. At the very least, for the first time ever in the Edgewood, I had someone to come home to. ”Come on,” I said, heading for the refrigerator. ”Frank's in the front room. He's a complete mess.”
”The doorman?” she said, following me obediently.
We took the vodka to the great room, and I poured Frank a stiff drink. He knocked it back without protest, and I poured him another.
”What's wrong with him?” Jennifer asked.
”It's complicated,” I started, but the vodka had brought vitality back to his spirit, and he started rambling again, in Spanish. ”Frank,” I said, taking his hand. ”Frank. Speak English, Frank.”
”No, it's okay,” said Jennifer calmly. ”He's upset. He loves her, but it's hopeless, she is a G.o.ddess and he is nothing. And his father, there's some-que quieres compartir con nosotros tu familia, Frank?”
So it turns out that a private-school education in New York City is pretty thorough. Also, Jennifer was in the Spanish Club, so her comprehension didn't fall completely apart when someone started talking fast.
”He lives with his father and his two brothers in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens,” Jennifer translated. ”He came from the Dominican Republic six years ago and sent money to them faithfully, but they were never grateful, never-they became jealous. No matter what he sent, it made them unhappy and greedy for more and so they came here. He is here legally but they are not. He can't, they use up all the money-they-” He interrupted her with a long explanation, and she asked him some questions before continuing. ”He doesn't blame them because the life they had in the Dominican Republic was nothing, there are no jobs there and they want to be men, but they cannot find work, and if the INS finds out that they're staying with him he's afraid he'll be deported too. He told one of his brothers-como se llama tu hermano horrible-”
”Manuel,” Frank answered, trying to continue and contradict her about the ”horrible” part, but she cut him off.
”He has a horrible brother who threatens him. He is supporting all of them, and this brother, Manuel, threatens Frank that if he doesn't bring home more and more money he'll have to turn himself in to the INS and they will all have to go back, even though Frank totally has his green card, I know he does because the building would never hire him if he didn't, and my mom was on the committee that interviewed him. They love him here, they'd never let that happen. Frank,” she continued, turning her attention back to him. ”Es impossible, lo que se dice su hermano. El es un mentiroso. Un mentiroso,” she insisted. He protested firmly, but I could tell he knew that whatever she was telling him was right. ”Porque no ayudan?” she continued. ”Porque no trabajan, todo su familia viven aqui en Nueva York, aqui nadie le importa si usted tiene una tarjeta verde! Aqui a la Edgewood, si, es importante, but muchas otras lugares no no no. Todos los restaurantes en la cuidad, nadie le importa!”
He disagreed with her. They argued back and forth. He finally started to cry. She put her arms around him and he wept about his hopeless situation, the trap of his family, his love for a woman who was so far above him that the only word he could use to describe her was diosa. Now Frank was drinking straight out of the bottle, and by the time we had the whole story out of him, he was stupefied with grief and completely smashed, so there was really no way he could go back to work. I got him a pillow and a blanket from my bedroom, and he fell asleep on the floor, with the light fading from gold to blue all around him.
Jennifer looked up at the changing light and checked her watch. ”I've got to go,” she said, nervous. ”I left Katherine playing in her room and we locked the door and she knows not to open it? But she's seven, she could just forget and open the door and then anyone could come in and then what would happen.”
I was following her back, through the kitchenette and the laundry room. As we moved, she quickly filled me in on what she had found out by just hanging around, hiding behind doors, and listening in on the flurry of phone calls that had come in and out of the Whites' apartment over the past two days.
”People are really mad,” she said. ”Mom told them she knows you and you're okay. I told her she had to tell them that, because you are such a good babysitter and a G.o.dsend, but you know there're a lot of rich a.s.sholes in this building, and they kept talking about you and your sisters and how this is such a famous apartment, that, um, you know-they can't just let it go down the toilet, s.h.i.+t like that.”
”Oh that's lovely,” I said. ”Such swell manners they have here on the Upper West Side.”
”Oh, you know people say things like that, and you know.” She shrugged, not knowing how to say what came next. She decided to just say it. ”You know, Tina, they didn't like your mom.”
”Some of them did. Len did.”
”I don't think you should trust Len, Tina,” Jennifer suggested cautiously. ”Mom said, she was talking to him in the elevator? And he said he knew your mom, they had a deal where he kept some plants here, so he came by all the time, and he saw her and Bill together, and she kept Bill drunk so she could get him to sign things.”
”He didn't say that.”
”That's what my mom said he said. He claims to be a real witness, like he saw all this and he's ready to testify. And he had some idea about having a big press conference? To get you out of here?”
”Yeah, I was down there earlier. It was a total scene down in the lobby.”
”Well, Mom said that was his idea.”
”It was his idea? Len's?” The sheer betrayal of it hit me like a fist to the stomach. I felt sick.
”That's what she said.”
”It's lies. My mom wouldn't, she wasn't like that. She ...” I stopped myself, completely caught by how much I didn't know about my own mother and what she might or might not have been doing for the last three years of her life. ”I don't know why he would do something like this.”
Jennifer looked kind of sad, like she was sorry that I wasn't savvier about people like Len. ”They're all like that here, Tina. They're all, well, you know. They live in the Edge,” she concluded lamely.
I gave her a quick hug good-bye as she glanced around the lost room at all the junk and the thrown-away details of the lives of the people who had lived there. Katherine was apparently still content; we could hear her up above, chattering to herself in some near corner of her room.
”Frank's right, you know,” Jennifer suddenly announced, turning back for a second. ”Julianna Gideon is a G.o.ddess. And I mean, in my social studies cla.s.s they all talk about democracy and America and immigrants and New York being this big melting pot, but he's a doorman from the Dominican Republic and he's got a horrible family, and she's like, a G.o.ddess. And the Gideons just have pots of money, they are truly stinking rich, just like everyone else who lives here. You don't think about things like that. But, you know, it really is hopeless.” And with that hopeless remark, she ascended to her sister's room.
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