Benefactors
Why lie? In the days when I was an item on the society pages, I craved the light of those eyes upon me.
But I also wasn’t sure whether I was happy with how they saw me. A hopeful symbol of wealth and success during the Depression years? A vain one? Hairbrush in hand, transfixed by my own reflection in the mirror?
Now, walking south from Grimaldi toward Delmonico’s on a stomach full of Oreos and a head full of Chianti, I see my faint reflection in the glass of the dark windows I pass, and I want neither to stare nor to look away. I am just Lillian Boxfish, eighty-four or eighty-five. No one still alive can correct me.
If I wanted to take a shortcut from Madison Avenue to Broadway, which I can follow almost all the way to my destination, I’d diagonal my way through Madison Square Park. But that place is in greater disrepair than I am. While I frequent it by day, at night it fills like a horrible candy box with pimps and hookers, with drug dealers and their clients. I do not know the means by which such suppliers handle their institutional advertising, but they clearly know what they’re doing, for they never appear to have any shortage of business. No doubt having a motivated customer base helps.
By day, while on my walks, I still stop in Madison Square Park to take my lunch breaks, even though my breaks are entirely self-assigned. When I worked at R.H. Macy’s the park was magnificent, a spot to sit and compose my verses on city life. Now, even by day, it comprises nasty little bites of the unsavory covered with litter, its lawn mostly bare. Teeming with the pigeons I can’t help but love, prolific and filthy, cooing stupidly, reproducing, pooping—hopping fearlessly, oblivious among the hypodermics.
Whenever I eat my lunch there these days, I always think of and hope to see Wendy. About half the time I do. She and I met last summer, mid-July, hot and hazy, the air like a gauze bandage, tight and stifling.
Until that humid afternoon when Wendy spotted me, no one had told me I was beautiful for a long, long while. I noticed her first, actually, though I hadn’t planned to say anything to her; rather, I meant simply to sit on my bench and watch her.
Even in a city populated by outsiders with bizarre magnetism, she felt extra compelling, stalking the edges of the park in a feline fashion that made me think of Phoebe, of the way a house cat hunts, so that one can’t tell whether it’s serious or only playing, or if it’s sure itself.
Wendy was obviously a woman, but had a lean androgynous look, flat-chested in a white tank top and torn-up jeans. Her thick black hair, choppy and cropped at the nape, looked less styled than chewed on. She wore a huge Nikon camera on a strap around her neck, and she held it to her right eye with veiny hands, their fingernails painted a chipped black, taking picture after picture. But she was no tourist.
She saw me seeing her, and I, never one to feign shame in my interest in others, waved to her with my own hand: well-manicured in classic red, gold watch on my wrist. A summer linen suit encased the rest of me—because no one wants to see these arms and legs uncovered, least of all me. I wore sunglasses, Dior, from the 1960s, because by then I had come to prefer my face half-obscured.
Wendy strode over and introduced herself, shaking my hand, very direct. When she spoke, her demeanor—forthright, Midwestern—contrasted with her feral appearance, and made me laugh.
“You’re beautiful, Lillian,” she said. “Especially when you smile like that. May I take your photograph?”
“Maybe,” I said. “First, have a seat. Tell me, why would you want to do a thing like that?”
“Well,” she said, perching on the edge of the bench, almost as a prelude to a pounce, “I’m a photographer. Professionally. I work in a studio, as an assistant, just south of here. But I’m also an artist. Trying to be, you know? I’m working on my portfolio. And to do that, I’m operating under the motto, ‘I’m seeing beauty in less-obvious places, and that makes me a more interesting person.’”
“Ambitious,” I said. “But your motto also damns me with faint praise, doesn’t it?”
“Oh my goodness,” she said. “No! I just mean, like, society’s idea of beauty is really warped and limited, and you—”
“I’m joking,” I said. “I’d be honored. Where are you from, Wendy?”
“Garrettsville, Ohio,” she said, shrugging in apology. “But I live in Chelsea.”
“You’re looking at a long-term resident of Murray Hill,” I said. “I haven’t been to Chelsea in ages. And I’ve never been to Garrettsville, Ohio, but I’ve heard of it. Hart Crane was from there. Do you know him? His work? He was a poet. Killed himself in the 1930s by swan diving off an ocean liner.”