“I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never read his poems,” she said. Then her eyes got wide and she asked, “Lillian, are you a poet?”
I liked the way she asked that—not “Do you write poetry?” or even “Do you like poetry?” but “Are you a poet?” For Wendy, one’s art was one’s identity, and everything else one did simply amounted to getting by. She was still quite young, I realized, and she hadn’t been in the city very long.
“I am,” I said. “But not a poet like Crane. Though I do admire his work. You should read his first book, White Buildings—although The Bridge seems more the fashion these days. I only understand every third word of his, but it doesn’t matter. Me—my verses are less opaque.”
“I’d love to read your poems sometime,” said Wendy.
“That won’t be so easy, I’m afraid, as all my books are out of print.”
“Books?” Wendy put her hand—pale and sturdy—on my linen sleeve. “Lillian, you write books?”
“I did,” I said. “In my prime I was even a bit of a celebrity. Everyone read me. But in the latter-day world of poetry it seems that nobody wants to read somebody everybody reads, as Yogi Berra might put it. So I’m quite forgotten now.”
I was pleased with that bon mot, but Wendy sped past without sparing it a second look. “Well, you must have copies,” she said. “You could loan them to me, couldn’t you?”
“I could, yes. If I ever see you again. But what would a young go-getter like you want with an old lady like me?”
As it turned out, she’d want plenty—and I can’t say I’m displeased. Wendy is now one of my best, if most improbable, friends.
I round the corner of Madison Avenue to East Twenty-Third Street, skirting the south edge of the park, taking the long way to connect to Broadway. As I do, I can’t help looking over my shoulder to see if Wendy might be in the park. She’s not, of course; she has enough sense not to go there after dark.
And tonight, I remember—I know because she invited me—she and her husband are hosting a New Year’s Eve bash for all their artist friends at their apartment in Chelsea.
Wendy is like that, now that she knows me. She treats me as if I’m not actually sixty years older than she. Her insistence on including me—her idea that an odd old woman might have any business ringing in 1985 amid her chic bohemian demimonde—is sweet and silly and fantastic. I’m quite touched.
When Gian and the grandkids were visiting last week, I had Wendy over to meet them, over coffee and hot cocoa. After she’d gone, Gian had remarked how happy he was that I had her in my life, and how she must seem almost like a daughter to me. That’s a pretty sentiment, so I did not correct him. But the truth is, that is not what she feels like, and of that I am glad. She is my friend, not my child, and thus our rapport has been unfraught and egalitarian, unburdened by guilt or disappointment.
Gian, on the other hand, is my child, not my friend. I love him more than any other human who still breathes upon this planet, but one child—one constant emergency, one ritual madness, one wrecker and remaker of myself—was and remains enough.
Crossing the street to continue south on Broadway, I don’t even have to wait for the light, there’s so little traffic. I jaywalk with impunity.
If something happened to me, who would see it?
If the Subway Vigilante were out and about on these same sidewalks, who would know it was him?
Wendy and I ended up going to lunch together the day we met. I invited her, and she hesitated, and I thought that maybe, as I had suspected, she didn’t want to spend her years as a young artiste in the company of the aged. When I said as much—blunt, I know—she said no, it was because she didn’t have any money. My treat, I told her, and still she shilly-shallied.
“What’s the harm in a free egg salad sandwich?” I asked. “I’m going to take us to a deli, not the Ritz.”
“I don’t want to take advantage,” Wendy said. “My husband—he’s a painter—is always saying that we need to find patrons. Benefactors. People with money to collect and cultivate our art, you know? And that seems so sleazy to me.”
“Accepting one free meal from a lonely old has-been won’t put your integrity in peril,” I said. “And your husband is right. One must hustle to make money, don’t you think?”
“Lillian, you’re hysterical,” she said. “But what’ll you get out of it?”
“Attention,” I said, and off we went.