*
Calla sat in front of Mr. Collier’s desk at the Third Federal Savings and Loan of Philadelphia wearing her best blue velvet hat, black wool coat, and kid gloves. She knew to wear her Sunday best to any meetings at the bank. Sam Borelli hadn’t cared for institutions much; when he stood on line to make a deposit to meet payroll, he would grumble about the grandeur, the granite floors, marble counters, and gargantuan mother-of-pearl-faced clock, reminding his daughter that it was the customers who paid for this opulence. He called the intimidating decor “the splendor of the lender.”
A row of fine mahogany desks were lined up across the room, the contents of their polished surfaces identical down to the leather pencil cups. The men that sat behind them looked alike, as though they had been ordered from a catalogue that sold bankers like farm equipment or trousers. Buy your financial expert here! the advertisement might have read: choose a gray, myopic, balding middle-aged man with roots in England to handle your money. He knows something you don’t. No wonder most of the paisans in South Philly kept their money under their mattresses.
Elwood Collier, the jovial bank manager caring for Calla’s interests, looked like the rest, but at least he was pleasant. He returned to his desk with three envelopes for her.
“Here you are, Miss Borelli.” Mr. Collier handed her the bundle of envelopes and took a seat. He looked at Calla’s face and reassured her. “Don’t question your decision. Since the war, houses are going for fair prices. You did well.”
“You know, I always wondered,” she said softly.
“What’s that?” He pushed the cancellation of Sam Borelli’s mortgage across the desk for Calla to sign.
“If having money makes you feel better.”
Mr. Collier smiled. “I think it helps.”
“I don’t think it does.” Calla picked up the fountain pen and signed the document.
Collier stamped the contract paid in full and placed the receipt in the file. He folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward. “This happens in every family. It happened in mine. The parents pass away, and the children are left behind and have to make a decision about the family home. Your sisters don’t live in the city any longer. They’re married, with their own families. Someday you’ll marry and have a family and you’ll look back on this and know that you made the right decision. A house is nothing more than wood and stone.”
“A pile of bricks?” Calla added.
“That’s right.”
“Not to me.”
“I didn’t mean to sound insensitive. But it isn’t the house itself that matters, it’s the people in it that make a home.”
“I don’t know. Places are important, Mr. Collier. At the theater, sometimes we think to do the play without a set, just lights and black walls. We call it minimalism. And pretty soon we’re in rehearsal, and we realize that the actors need things to fill out the world. They need places to sit. Doors to move through. Rooms to make memories in, to live inside. A place to hold their stories. A context to be. Familiar places that we return to, where we remember the scent of the kitchen when our mother’s baked or the wallpaper of roses in the stairwell or the old porch with the bum step; they aren’t nothing. They are part of what makes us human. We’re defined by where we dwell and how we take up space in this life and what we choose to put in it. I’ll always mourn the sale of my father’s house, my mother’s garden, and the kitchen table where I ate every meal of my life. Why wouldn’t I? I don’t know how you sell off every memory you ever made and feel good about it.”
“I can’t answer that for you. But I do know, when it’s time for you to buy a new home, you come and see me.” Mr. Collier handed her his business card. “And this bank will be happy to help you with your first mortgage.”
Calla stood. She exhaled slowly from her mouth, and the sound she made came out like a whistle. The bankers looked up from their desks to see where the whistle came from as Mr. Collier rose to shake her hand.
She placed the envelopes in her purse, the individual checks cut for the proceeds of the sale of the family homestead on Ellsworth Street. There was a check for Helen and one for Portia, and the final one belonged to her.
As Calla walked out of the bank, she wished for the first time that she were wealthy—Really rich!, as the cartoon character Little Mary Mix-Up had shouted that morning on the funny pages—because if Calla were loaded, it would have never come to this. She would have bought the house from her sisters and lived in those rooms all the days of her life. She needed those walls, for reasons she could name and for others that she couldn’t. Calla believed there was something terribly wrong about selling the house, but she couldn’t convince her sisters to hold on to it any longer. They had reached the limit after three years of Calla buying time with nothing but empty promises and hopes of a hit at the theater to provide extra cash. Surely her brothers-in-law had put pressure on their wives, and they had issued an ultimatum. Calla was not their responsibility, they were raising families of their own, running businesses. She accepted that, so Calla sold the house. Everything her parents lived, worked, and struggled for was gone, divided into three parts, never to be whole again.
*
The Drama Bookshop was on the second story of a building on Forty-Second Street whose street-level store sold musical instruments. Nicky climbed the stairwell off the street and entered the shop, filled with books and light that poured in through the storefront windows. The shop had a clear view of Times Square, the sidewalks were packed with people while the streets cluttered with cars and trucks. The last of the gray snow had melted along the gutters of Midtown, turning into black streams before disappearing into the grates on the street corners. Nicky was happy to have a day off, out of the traffic, noise, and cold.
The dark walnut floors of the bookstore were buckled from age. The warped shelves were filled with books about the history of theater, biographies of the players, plays, and academic volumes on directing, acting, and producing. A felt-covered game table was filled with a display of coffee table books with elaborate illustrations of costume design, rendering of sets, and photographs of evocative stage lighting.