Verrazano Narrows

1968

EVERYONE AGREED THAT Gorham Master was going to be successful. He was sure of it himself. He knew exactly what he wanted, he had it all mapped out, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

At Groton he’d been impressive, and now he was a sophomore at Harvard. If his studies at the university were important to him, so was baseball, and he’d shown himself to possess the true outfielder’s instinct for reacting to a ball as soon as it’s been hit. Men liked Gorham and so did women. Blue bloods liked him because he was a blue blood; and everyone else did because he was friendly, and polite, and a good sportsman. Employers, in a few years’ time, were going to hire him because he was intelligent and hard-working, and knew how to fit in.

His closest friends would have known two other things about him. The first was that, though not lacking in bravery, he had within him a decided streak of conservatism and caution. The second, which was related to the first, was that he was determined to be as unlike his father as he could.

But it was because of his father that he’d returned to New York from Harvard this chilly February weekend.

His mother’s message on Wednesday had been clear. Come sooner rather than later. And when he’d arrived at her Staten Island house on Saturday evening, Julie had been direct.

“You know I hadn’t seen your father for a couple of years when he called me the other night. He wanted to see me to say good-bye. So I went, and I’m glad I did.”

“Is it really so bad?”

“Yes. The doctor told him he has cancer. The prognosis is that it won’t take long, and I hope for his sake that the end will come soon. Naturally I told you to come at once.”

“I can’t quite take it in.”

“Well, you’ve got until the morning. And Gorham,” she added firmly, “be nice.”

“I always am.”

She gave him a look. “Just don’t get into a fight.”

On Sunday morning, as the ferry started across the broad waters of the harbor, there was a cold wind coming in from the east. How many times, Gorham wondered, had he taken this ferry with his father when he was a child? Two hundred? Three hundred? He didn’t know. But one thing was certain: every time he had taken that ferry, and stared across at the approaching shoreline of Manhattan, he had vowed that he was going to live there. And now, here it was again, looking somewhat bleak on a gray February morning, but no less inviting to his eyes.

Of course, the place had changed quite a bit since he was a child. The waterfront, for instance, had completely altered. When he was a young boy, the docks of lower Manhattan had still been crowded with working men unloading cargo vessels. Some of that cargo handling was skilled work, too. But then the big containers had started to take the place of the old cargoes, and there was less and less work for the men on the docks, even across on the Brooklyn wharfs. The new facilities with their giant hoists were at Newark and Elizabeth ports now, over in New Jersey. The passenger liners still came on the Hudson to the West Side piers, but splendid though it was to see the liners, the waterfront now was a genteel echo of what it had been once.

The city, it seemed to Gorham, was being tidied up and streamlined. The mighty hand of Robert Moses had continued to lay down highways for the motor car, and for the huge trucks which now delivered to, and frequently blocked, the Midtown streets. Moses wanted to sweep away the slums as well, and in numerous places along the East River, high-rise blocks, for better or worse, were springing up in their place. Urban renewal, it was called. The masses of small manufacturers and factories that had crowded the poorer districts, especially in Brooklyn and the New York waterfront areas—those dirty, grainy, humble powerhouses of the city’s wealth—had also been melting away.

But if Manhattan was changing its character, if services were replacing manufacture, if Ellis Island was long since closed, and New York’s huge floods of immigrants regulated into a less visible seepage through the nation’s borders, the great city of New York still contained in its five boroughs vibrant communities from all the ends of the Earth.

Some of his friends at Harvard thought he was crazy to want to live in New York. For the city had been having big problems in the last few years. Its budget was in crisis, taxes had been going up. There was racial tension; crime was rising. There were almost three murders a day in the city now. Major corporations, which had been drawn to New York since the turn of the century, had been moving their headquarters to other cities. But to Gorham Master, New York was still the center of the world. As soon as he graduated, Manhattan was where he was going. Somebody might offer him a wonderful job, with a big salary, in some other city, but he’d turn it down for any decent job in New York. The only thing he hadn’t reckoned on was that his father wouldn’t be there.

He had to admit that, whatever his father’s faults, life with Charlie Master was never dull. During the last two decades, the world around them had been changing fast. The certainties of the fifties had been challenged, restrictions been torn down. New freedoms had come, and new dangers.

Yet strangely enough, Gorham realized, he had learned the most about each change not from his own contemporaries, but from his father. While he’d been at high school, it had been Charlie who had joined the civil rights marches, and who had made him listen to tape recordings of Martin Luther King. Neither of them thought the Vietnam War was a good cause, but while Gorham was just hoping that the draft might be ended by the time he was due to graduate from Harvard, his father had made enemies by writing newspaper articles against the war.

At least Gorham could respect his father for his political views. But some of Charlie’s other activities were a different matter. It was his father, not he, who knew all the bands, Charlie who explained psychedelic experiences to him, and who started smoking dope. “I don’t mind Dad being young at heart,” Gorham had complained to his mother Julie, “but does he have to go on getting younger and younger?” And during the last couple of years, his father’s lifestyle had caused some friction between them. Gorham wasn’t shocked by his father, he just thought that Charlie was turning into a middle-aged adolescent.

And yet, adolescent or not, in the last few years of his life, Charlie had had a big success. Having spent years trying to write plays for the stage, he’d become fascinated by television and earned some useful money as a comedy writer. Then, without telling Gorham, he had published his novel.

The ferry was well out into the harbor now. Looking back, Gorham stared at the huge span of the Verrazano Bridge, and shook his head with amusement. Whatever Charlie’s faults, it amused his son to realize that for the rest of his life, whenever he looked at that huge New York landmark, he’d be forced to remember his father.

Verrazano Narrows had been a good choice of title. Not many people remembered that the first European to arrive in New York harbor, way back in the early sixteenth century, had been the Italian Verrazano. Everybody knew Hudson, though he’d actually got there more than eighty years later, but Verrazano was forgotten; and for years the leaders of the Italian community had been lobbying for recognition of the great navigator. When a vast bridge was finally constructed across the entrance to New York harbor, the Italians wanted it named after him. Robert Moses had opposed the name, but the Italians lobbied Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and finally got their way. And it was fitting that the great suspension bridge, joining Staten Island to Brooklyn, should bear an Italian name. For it was one of the most elegant bridges ever built.

Verrazano Narrows, by Charles Master, came out in 1964 in the same month that the bridge was opened. It was a novel, but it almost read like a poem. People compared it to a great book from the forties, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Verrazano Narrows was a love story about a man who lives with his son on Staten Island, and has a passionate affair with a woman in Brooklyn. The Narrows in the title also suggested the narrow prejudices the couple had had to overcome. Gorham had supposed that the story might be somewhat autobiographical, but if so, his father had never indicated the identity of the woman to him or to anybody else. Anyway, it had been a huge literary success. They’d made a movie out of it too. Charlie had toured the country, made friends with a bunch of people out in San Francisco, stayed on the West Coast for a while, and learned to smoke dope.

When he reached the ferry terminal, Gorham took the subway. There weren’t many people about. At the far end of his car, a couple of blacks were standing, and they glanced toward him. He cursed inwardly. They were probably harmless, but one had to be careful these days, he thought. People in the city developed antennae that sent warning signals whenever trouble came near. As it happened, he was carrying quite a bit of cash with him today. He really shouldn’t have entered a deserted subway car like this.

Was it reasonable to suspect two guys just because they were black? Was it right for someone who knew parts of Martin Luther King’s speeches by heart to do so? No, it wasn’t. But people did. The two blacks carried on their quiet conversation, and ignored him for several stations. Then other people got in, and the two men left.

Gorham came out of the subway on Lexington Avenue. There was only a block to walk across to Park. He reached the top of the subway stair, turned. And cursed. Then he stepped off the sidewalk into the street.

Garbage. Piles of black garbage bags all over the sidewalk. Garbage as far as the eye could see.

New York: city of strikes. Two years ago it had been a transit strike. That hadn’t shut the city down, because New Yorkers walked to work. But it had done nothing for the city’s reputation. Now it was the sanitation workers who were on strike. The mayor, John Lindsay, was a decent man and an honest one, but whether he’d be able to control the turbulent city and meet its financial problems remained to be seen. Meanwhile, the garbage bags were piling up on the sidewalks in ever increasing heaps. There was only one blessing. It was February. What the stench would be like if it were August did not bear thinking about.

So Charlie Master was dying while the garbage piled up in the streets. Somehow, irrationally, Gorham felt as if his father was being insulted by the city he loved.

Yet when he got to Park Avenue, he found his father in better spirits than he expected.

After Rose had died at the start of the decade, Charlie had taken over her apartment. For a while, he had kept his old place on Seventy-eighth, and used it as a gallery for his pictures. Then he’d given it up, and used the second bedroom on Park as a temporary store. He’d been talking about renting a small studio downtown this year, but Gorham supposed that wouldn’t be happening now.

Mabel, his grandmother’s housekeeper, was looking after Charlie, and a nurse came in a couple of times a day. If possible, Charlie wanted to stay where he was, right to the end.

When he entered the living room, Gorham found his father dressed and sitting in an armchair. He looked thin and pale, but he smiled cheerfully.

“It’s good to see you, Gorham. How did you come?”

“I took the train.”

“You didn’t fly? Everyone seems to fly these days. The airports are doing great business.” It was true. All three airports, Newark, JFK and La Guardia, were getting busier every year. The city had become a huge national and international hub. “Makes you wonder where they all go.”

“Maybe I’ll fly next time.”

“You should. You just here for the weekend?”

Gorham nodded. Then he suddenly felt a wave of guilt. What was he thinking of? This was his father, who was dying.

“I could stay …”

Charlie shook his head. “I’d rather you kept studying. I’ll call you when I need you.” He smiled again. “I’m really pleased to see you.”

“Is there anything I can get you?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any grass?”

Gorham was about to say, “Oh for God’s sake,” but he bit the words back. Instead he just sighed. “Sorry, Dad. I haven’t.”

It was one of the causes of friction between them. Gorham had smoked marijuana only once in his life. That had been the weekend after he graduated high school, back in ’66. He remembered his hesitation, how his friends had told him that Bob Dylan had introduced the Beatles to grass in ’64, right here in New York, and that their best work had begun from then. Was all that stuff really true? He had no idea.

But Gorham had never done it again. Maybe he hadn’t particularly liked it the first time. Perhaps his innate conservatism and caution had set in. He had friends who were getting into LSD, with terrible results, and in his mind he associated hard drugs with soft. Whatever the reasons, he ran with a group of friends who, for the most part, didn’t do drugs, and it embarrassed him that his father did.

“It looks like a big mess outside. Garbage bags everywhere.”

“It is.”

“Nothing dims our affection for the city, though.”

“Right.”

“I guess you still want to come and be a banker here?”

“Family tradition. Except for you, that is.” Had he allowed a hint of rebuke to creep into his voice? If so, his father had chosen to ignore it.

“Do you remember your grandmother giving you a Morgan silver dollar when you were a boy? It’s nothing to do with the Morgan bank, you know. It’s the name of the designer.”

“Remember? I keep it with me every day. It’s my talisman, the badge of my destiny.” Gorham grinned a little sheepishly. “That’s rather childish, I guess.” In fact, the dollar had a more critical significance than that. It was the reminder of the family’s past as bankers and merchants, in the days when they still had wealth—the wealth that his aberrant father had never even attempted to get back.

But rather to Gorham’s surprise, his father looked delighted.

“That’s good, Gorham. Your grandmother would be so pleased—she wanted to give you something you’d value. So you’ll try to get a job with a bank as soon as you graduate?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s a pity my father isn’t here, he could have helped you. I know some bankers I could ask.”

“It’s okay.”

“Bankers like people like you.”

“I hope so.”

“Do you worry about the draft?”

“Not right now, but I could be eligible when I graduate. Maybe I’ll go to divinity school or something. That’s what some people are doing to get out of it.”

“Martin Luther King is saying that the war is immoral. But I guess you don’t want to protest about it.”

“I’ll keep a low profile.”

“You should go to business school later. Get an MBA.”

“My plan is to work for a few years, and then go to Columbia.”

“Then you’ll marry, after the MBA?”

“When I make vice president. Maybe assistant vice president. AVP would do, if I find the right person.”

“A good corporate spouse?”

“I think so.”

Charlie nodded. “Your mother would have been a good corporate spouse. An excellent one.” He paused. “Things don’t always work out quite the way we plan, Gorham.”

“I know.”

“I should keep this place, if I were you. The monthly maintenance isn’t too bad—I’ll leave enough to cover that. And being in a good building will save you a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t want to think about that, Dad.”

“You don’t have to think about it. That’s just the way it’ll be. This place will suit you much better than me. I should have moved down to Soho.” He sighed. “My mistake.”

Soho: South of Houston Street. It was a quiet, bare area of former warehouses and cobbled streets, where artists could get a studio or a loft for very little money. A short walk northward and one was in Greenwich Village. Gorham could see that his father would have been happy there. And he was just wondering how to respond when Charlie suddenly said: “You know what I want? I want to see the Guggenheim. Will you take me there?”

They took a taxi. Charlie looked a little frail, but by the time they got out on the corner of Fifth and Eighty-ninth, he seemed to have gained energy.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s great masterpiece might not be to everyone’s taste, but Gorham could see why his father liked it. The museum’s white walls, and its cylindrical stack, like the top of an inverted spiral cone, was in open contrast to and rebellion against so much of the recent public architecture of the city. The huge glass tower blocks that had been rising since the late fifties enraged Charlie Master. The setback laws that had forced architects to make creative designs for the higher, narrower floors of the previous generation of skyscrapers had been relaxed. Huge, flat-topped glass and metal stumps were soaring up forty floors and more, blocking out the sky. In compensation, they had to provide open plaza-like spaces for the public at ground level. But in practice, the spaces were frequently cold, and soulless, and not much used. As for the glass towers themselves: “They are ugly, and boring,” Charlie would cry. He was particularly incensed about a group of Midtown bank towers on Park which he seemed to consider a personal affront to the avenue where he lived.

The strange, curved shape of the Guggenheim, however, was organic, like a mystical plant. Charlie loved it. He seemed quite content to look at the building from the outside. When he’d done, he told Gorham he’d like to walk down Fifth a little way.

If the volume of vehicles using the city streets had been going up for the last two decades, one relief had been granted. Most of the great avenues were one-way now. Park, with its broad arrangement of double lanes, carried traffic in both directions, but to the west of it, Madison carried the traffic uptown, and Fifth Avenue carried it down. Walking down Fifth on a Sunday morning, therefore, especially in February, was a quiet business. To avoid the garbage, they walked beside the park.

The Museum Mile, as people called it, was one of the most delightful walks in the city. Having left the Guggenheim, they passed opposite delightful apartment buildings. Then they went by the long, neoclassical facade of the Metropolitan Museum, and down another ten blocks or so toward the Frick. Charlie was walking a little slowly, but he seemed quite determined to continue, and from time to time, he would stare into Central Park, admiring the wintry scene, Gorham supposed. When they came level with the Frick, he sighed.

“I’m a little tired now, Gorham,” he said. “I think we’d better get a taxi back.” It seemed a rather short ride to Gorham, but he wasn’t going to argue, and it was only a few moments before a yellow cab came by. When they were in the cab, Charlie gave him a wry smile. “Couldn’t find what I wanted,” he said.

“Which was?”

“A guy in a red baseball hat. He’s usually in the park around there. He has good stuff.”

“Oh.” So the expedition had been about buying marijuana. Gorham felt a flash of annoyance. His father saw it.

“You don’t understand, Gorham,” he said quietly. “It helps with the pain.”

When they got back into the apartment, Mabel had made them soup and a light lunch. They talked as they ate, mostly about things they’d done together when Gorham was a child. When lunch was over, Charlie said: “There’s something I’m going to ask you to do for me, Gorham, when this is all over.”

“Sure.”

“There’s a piece of paper with a list of names and addresses on it by the bureau. Would you bring it over?” Gorham brought the list. He could see about a dozen names on it. “Most of these are just friends of one kind or another. You’ll see my doctor’s there, and one of the Keller family, and some others. I’ve left them little mementoes in my will, nothing much, but it’d be awfully nice if you’d deliver them and say I asked you to do it. It’s just that I’d prefer them to receive the presents from your hand, rather than from my lawyer in the mail. Would you do that?”

“I already said I would.” Gorham ran his eye down the list. The doctor he knew, and several of the others. Others were unfamiliar. “Sarah Adler?”

“A gallery owner. I had some paintings from there. She might give you something if she likes you. You’ll do them all?”

“Of course.”

“I’m feeling a little tired now, Gorham. I’m going to sleep a while. I think you should get back to school now.”

“I’ll come back next weekend.”

“Make it two weeks. I’ve got some things going on next weekend, and it’s a long way for you to come. Two weeks will be fine.”

Gorham could see that his father was getting tired, so he didn’t argue. After parting from Charlie, he quietly told Mabel that he’d be telephoning to check up on him in the coming days.

Once he was outside, he realized that he had more than an hour to kill before the next Boston train. So he decided to walk a bit to get some fresh air. Crossing Madison and Fifth, he entered Central Park.

The trees were bare and there was snow on the ground, but the cold air was dry and bracing. As he went over the day in his mind, he decided that it could have been a lot worse. He hadn’t criticized his father or lost his temper, even once. Their meeting had been loving and harmonious. Thank God for that.

He wondered how long his father had got. Surely some months, at least. He’d visit him plenty more times, and make his final days as gentle a passing as he could.

He’d been walking about ten minutes when he saw the guy with the red baseball hat standing by a tree.

He was a black man, over six feet tall, wearing a long black coat and a black scarf he’d wrapped around his neck many times. His narrow shoulders were hunched. As Gorham came near, the man looked at him, but obviously without much hope. As he passed, the automatic “Smoke? Grass?” came without conviction. Out of habit, equally, Gorham walked sternly by, trying to ignore him.

He’d gone a little way before his father’s words came back to him. “It helps with the pain.” He’d read about that, people with cancer taking marijuana. Why not? After all, they took other drugs to ease the pain. Maybe his doctor could give him dope on prescription. Could he do that? Gorham had no idea. Presumably not, or Charlie wouldn’t be trying to buy it in the park.

He looked at his watch. Wasn’t it time to be getting along to his train? Not really.

What was the law, exactly? The guy with the red baseball hat could be arrested, certainly, for selling the stuff. But what about if you bought some? In possession of an illegal substance—they arrested people for that, he was sure. What was it going to do to his chances of getting into a bank if he got arrested in Central Park? Not a good idea. He walked on.

So he was going to let his father suffer? His poor father who, in his own crazy way, had been good to him all his life? His father who had nothing in common with him, but treated him with all the kindness he might have reserved for a soulmate? The father who quietly ignored the little moments of irritation that he himself had been unable to conceal entirely even in the company of a dying man?

He turned round. The guy with the red baseball hat was still there. He looked about. Unless there was somebody hiding behind a tree, this section of the park was empty. He walked toward the dealer.

The guy looked at him questioningly. He had a thin face and a small, straggly beard.

“How much?”

“An eighth?”

The man said something, but Gorham hardly heard the price. He was looking around nervously.

“I’ll take half an ounce,” he said quickly. If the man was surprised, he gave no sign. He reached into his pocket and started pulling out little plastic bags. Gorham supposed he’d been given half an ounce, which he knew was plenty, but he had no idea what he was doing. He took the little bags and thrust them into a pocket of his pants, underneath his overcoat. He started to move away.

“You haven’t paid, man,” said the guy.

“Oh. Right.” Gorham pulled out some bills. “Is that enough?” He was starting to panic now.

“That’s enough,” said the dealer. It must have been too much, but right now Gorham didn’t care. He just wanted to get away. He hastened along the path, glancing back only once, hoping the dealer had vanished. But he was still standing there. Gorham followed the path until it led to another, and then made an eastward turn toward an exit onto Fifth. Thank God the guy was well out of sight by now.

He had just got to the sidewalk on Fifth when he saw the cop. He knew what he ought to do. He ought to look casual. After all, he was a respectable, conservative young man from Harvard who was going to be a banker, not a young guy with half an ounce of grass in his pocket. But he couldn’t help it. He froze. He probably looked as if he’d just killed someone in there.

The cop was watching him. He came toward him.

“Good afternoon, officer,” said Gorham. Somehow it sounded absurd.

“In the park?” said the cop.

“Yes.” Gorham was beginning to get control of himself now. “I needed a little walk.” The cop was still watching him. Gorham smiled sadly. “Do I look pale?”

“You might say that.”

“I guess I’d better get a coffee before I go back then.” He nodded grimly. “Not a good day. My father has cancer.” And then, because it was true, he felt the tears come to his eyes.

The cop saw.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “There’s a place where you can get coffee if you follow this street to Lexington.”

“Thank you.” He crossed Fifth and kept going all the way to Lexington. Then he turned north, went up a few blocks and came back to Park Avenue.

His father was still up when Mabel let him into the apartment. He was sitting in the chair, but he was slumped over on one arm, and his face was drawn. Obviously the effort of that day had taken a lot out of him.

“I found the guy with the red baseball hat,” Gorham said quickly, and he disgorged the contents of his pocket. He grinned. “I nearly got arrested.”

It took Charlie a few moments to summon his energy. But when he did, he looked up at Gorham with a gratitude that was touching.

“You did that for me?”

“Yes,” said Gorham. And kissed him.