Worthy Of This Great City Page 19

  And I took myself off to the foundering and just generally wrongheaded realm of newspaper journalism and became the authentic self I am today, neither wholly comedic nor hip nor excruciatingly balanced but flatly factual about everything we all know but refuse to face. I became practiced at assuming my deceptively innocent facade, presenting myself as a naïve explorer, a mere surrogate for the reader without personal stance or agenda, a modest and endearingly wild-haired caricature. Rather gleefully developing into my current persona, the eerily insightful, coldly ethical man everyone wants to impress.

  During this period the paper’s inevitable downward spiral gained momentum, what with insufficient financing and the unfounded faith of the new owners. Much of the editorial staff and most of the sales people vanished; meanwhile I worked like shit building myself a discerning readership while I had the chance because what else was I supposed to do?

  My ex-wife did not offer encouragement, an irrational reaction because the paper represented relative financial stability for her and Sophie. Here I’d improbably landed a real job with benefits, the first since my financial services days! Partly this was just her natural resentment at my obvious happiness, but in part it was about this irresponsible business of going around implying that ideas might take priority over hearth and home, about giving undue value to insidious, trickster concepts and the mysterious tyranny of reason. Who knows what words are likely to get up to?

  It made a new kind of end for us, and unlike the divorce this one was openly acrimonious and still traumatic, all her repressed rage overriding anything moderately civilized. The hate had been there since our marriage, but now it was unleashed and I learned what a horrible, even emotionally abusive father I was: “Destroying everything human, crippling her with your venom for no reason except you live to destroy. She’s a little girl, you fucking asshole.”

  Interesting.

  The paper was located in a renowned white Art Deco tower just north of Center City, a magnificent, echoing marble tomb with a newsroom of windows and columns, an obsolete monument to enlightenment and impending ruin. There was something Greek about it. I was assigned a workstation at the farthest reach of the extensive open floor, from which unobtrusive corner I absorbed the quietly desperate office scene, the empty desks with cords left dangling, the piles of deserted files on the floor. There was a disbelieving, profound sadness beneath the intelligent gentility of all those editors who frequented the opera, all those clever women with honest gray hair, all those wonderful souls stoically grieving a culture. Conversation was largely about colleagues gone elsewhere; and people spent a lot of time openly job hunting.

  I had the middle of three adjoining stations: one side was unoccupied, just a counter with a detached phone; the other belonged to my cohort at City Hall, Megan Shiff, who was understandably less than thrilled to have her physical and professional territory invaded. But the paper was revving up the local emphasis and there I was, ready to be loved.

  Megan was somewhere in her thirties, fair and freckled. She kept her reddish hair in a rather severe short bob, wore brown loafers with plaid socks and little if any make-up despite having pale lashes; she eschewed gyms and placidly disregarded her overall thickness. And she had this slightly pugnacious look about it, like a lot of women given to natural beauty. I have no issue with that either, only beauty is not the same as attraction. A political reporter first and last, divorced and a serial dater with impossibly high standards, her feelings were a continuing mystery to her. But once past the first week she naturally began to succumb to my cold judgmental pull and commenced rolling her chair back so we could talk without barriers. Thus she provided both quality professional companionship and a pugnacious liveliness that alleviated the otherwise dismal atmosphere, and I was grateful.

  We labored under the gimlet eye and competitive wit of the justly renowned Carmen Abramawitz; in her late thirties, Carmen was stout, Jewish-Hispanic, self-dramatizing, and intrinsically maternal. My first day she came bustling over for a formal welcome, picked up a photo of Megan’s puppy and remarked in disapproval or maybe wonder: “My rescue greyhound Lacey has a full wardrobe.” Adjusting her baggy wrap. “Okay, I know I have issues.” Carmen was an anomaly in our functional realm, a kindly rebuke to the endless gray and beige and plastic, the sharp square corners and excellent lighting and general courteous restraint. She shook my hand, settling herself into the extra chair, and absently inserted a curious finger into the soil of our little jade plant, a legacy. “So it is possible to survive in here.” Rummaging through the accumulated trash tossed into our extra cubicle, examining the take-out menus. “Indian. I loved India, the color, even the filth and noise. It’s something everyone should experience.” And finally actually looking at me, virtually impaling me with her comprehensive gaze until I felt slightly sick, like I’d forgotten to tidy up my mind before company arrived. She owned me now, this personage in a deep red peasant dress and loose black shawl, emanating energy even at apparent rest, just waiting for a chance to be clever. She would have made a good lawyer.

  So there I was, settling into another precarious position at best, wondering why the hell I insisted on behaving like a self-destructive adolescent but not urgently enough to figure it out. And meanwhile Megan devoted a good third of her day to the career question, researching how to build a successful blog, sketching out book proposals, pouring her youthful energy into the quest. “Because that has to be my priority.”

  I was reading the comments under one of my own pieces when I fell on a photo of Thom and Ruth captured at some benefit, she in a pale green gown, a chandelier just visible above them bestowing an elegant blessing. The force of those two personalities transcended the screen to gloat at me. Even grinning for the camera they were wonderfully absorbed in each other, two complete phonies playing out their deliberately storied romance, the viewer a necessary component of the relationship. But so what? Love is whatever love is for you. And it was sort of a touching shot, there was this innocent element to it.

  But I was surprised by the longevity of this amour, which I continued to dismiss as ultimately inconsequential. Easy enough, considering Thom’s deserved reputation as a rake: there was that white-blond model who broke into his townhouse and sprayed furious filth all over his abstract paintings, broke the penis off an African carving, and slashed the white leather upholstery. A radiologist from Singapore with extremist politics and hair to her waist. A cable morning newsreader who ended up in a tabloid divorce. And another exotic, Bolivian I think, a skyscraper-tall, beautifully coiffed, silk-suited beauty in four-inch heels. They all blurred together in my mind, uniformly exquisite, charming, intelligent and educated, barring an occasional underweight entertainment wannabe. (“Boring. Why don’t I learn?”) Women with a talent for self-preservation, enjoying a safe temporary fling, exploiting some local celebrity.

  In retrospect I should have found it significant that Ruth didn’t fit the mold, I should have accorded more importance to their chemistry, because it was a very palpable force. You could feel it watching them play their little word games, all that shit, even if at the same time you recognized the underlying agendas, that mutual usefulness. I made a point of tuning in the first time she had him on her program. That was just a one-time thing, a lovers’ offhand gesture, but he was a natural and listeners wanted more of him. Megan turned up in time for it; she pulled her chair out and listened while she ate oatmeal with a plastic spoon.

  Ruth introduced him without much fanfare, and opened the topic of an event all over the local news that week: the brutal white-on-white neighborhood beating of a suspected neighborhood rapist, a vicious attack carried out despite the police already there on the scene, pushing into the mob. There was video, so there was national coverage; you see the officers moving with that purposeful, trained tread they have, not hurrying.

  “We’re all wondering whether this is about a lack of faith in the justice system.” And then she took one of those recent off-ramps to insanity:
“Or is it possible there was some degree of self-hatred propelling that violence? Were these people actually attacking some unacknowledged part of themselves, projecting their own self-hatred onto an acceptable target? He was one of their own, one of them. And in the end you can only get angry at yourself; that’s a rule, you can look it up.”

  Thom took this lightly. “You think they were making him a scapegoat for self-hatred?” As if perfectly serious, and incredibly I could hear his absolute delight at her outré intellect.

  “Yes, just straight out trying to destroy something in themselves. Isn’t that how it always works, we marginalize unacceptable parts of ourselves. Isn’t that what they teach in sociology class?”

  “Yes, you say that because you instinctively empathize.” And with this bit of cheap flattery Thom flatly denied her true soul, cruelly fled from everything cowering in the dark pit of her psyche, crying out for notice and acceptance, and that’s how he determined his fate. “You’re a marvelous exception.”

  Megan rolled her eyes at me. I visualized Thom there next to Ruth, the hovering attention that always accompanied his exaggerated flattery.

  The inevitable voice of the blue-collar community, the aggressors in this scandal. “For me, I think they should have hurt him slow so he suffered. Sent him straight to hell without the right to an attorney.”

  “Yes. Yeah.” Always eager to explain. “Punishment is about preventing certain behaviors from becoming successful. Well, and the redemption of the offender, of course. But I don’t think it should have anything to do with revenge.”

  “These people separate themselves from the rest of humanity. They’re not even human, they’re monsters.” From a very young woman with a chirping child in the background. “I agree they need help but it has to start earlier. By the time the crime is committed it’s too late. The money is going in the wrong direction.”

  “But we’re all monsters.” Ruth said flatly. “We need to accept that. I know I have my unacceptable fantasies, really awful feelings. And I’m not going to tell you about them!” And then guided by that maddening because mostly perfect instinct for self-preservation she turned back on topic.

  Megan raised her scant eyebrows. “I’m surprised. She’s out there, but she definitely isn’t the kind of white supremacist nut I thought.”

  I nodded. “She’s a different variety of nut.”

  This public mating dance culminated in a small private wedding in the back garden of a wealthy mutual friend. It was inevitable but still mildly shocking. Lacking any other option I tolerated the situation but resolutely continued to consider it temporary. Ruth, in her adolescent fashion, truly adored Thom, but that infatuation would soon enough evaporate, leaving her free and unhurt. Only what of Thom’s uxorious contentment now he’d convinced himself he was in love?

  But for the moment they seemed to be reveling in their honeymoon happiness. “I feel blessed by the universe, although I suppose everyone feels this way at first,” she confessed. This was at a private dinner party some months later; she was next to me, Thom across from us, and she was gazing happily at him through a low gleam of squat white candles. “It’s such a holy state: holy sex, holy breakfast.” Then catching my expression and reverting to her usual sardonic tone: “Probably not an experience you’re familiar with.” She examined me and shook her head. “You know, Con, there’s no God in your face. There’s no trace of anything transcendent about you at all. It’s remarkable.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  City Councilman David Cevallos posed beside the Columbus monument at Penn’s Landing, his broad face radiating intelligent purpose, his substantial bulk shifting a little uncomfortably from one thick leg to the other. Here was a reassuring presence, this man who proudly flaunted his years, judiciously considered his words and actions, and naturally enough took serious offense at thoughtless interruptions.

  This memorial is made of towering dark gray stone, a truncated obelisk. From my perspective a few steps below, both man and monument were lost in the glare slanting in from the usual bleached noon sky. I lowered my gaze to the Camden side with its remnants of human civilization, a blur of false promises. I find the Columbus sculpture unfortunate, those immovable sails climbing up an authoritarian phallus, the overall resemblance to some kind of covert receiving device for extraterrestrial messages. Still I like that it’s there; the fact of it comforts me.

  A street fair surrounded us and descended towards the water, not really crowded that weekday afternoon but still lively: food vendor booths and hammocks, bocce ball, swan boats. Nobody sent much more than a curious glance our way. Temporary and intimate, the pop-up park was jammed summer nights with happy young holding hands and strolling and families eating at tables under colored lights. From our location we could see down to the Great Plaza and the broad gray river beyond. A minimal entourage: one enthusiastic aide, a handful of dutiful journalists, one photographer, and a handful of strays from the park who’d edged up as close as possible to the magic of our traveling importance machine.

  “Five centuries,” David said. Precious knowledge weighs heavily upon him: there’s always so much to consider, it’s such a difficult journey from that initial spark of certainty into speech capable of making a difference out in contemporary society. This business of being heard is an immense responsibility. “Five hundred years.” His silver gargoyle’s head inclined towards the memorial in acknowledgement of this honored immigrant ancestor. “Can you imagine what he would think if he arrived here today?”

  David is a born educator, a man of infinite patience, exacting about details, always ready with a thoughtful compliment or encouraging comment or appropriate anecdote. Now he paused to inspect the swift Delaware below us, silver-lit and sparkling aloud, extolling its own undoubted power. A dangerously alive river although past its active years.

  “Then there’s our own Mr. Penn, who knew this river well. When he first set foot on this great continent he envisioned a new kind of future here on this land between these two great waterways, the Delaware river and the Schuylkill river. What is fascinating to me is that William Penn was really what we think of today as a city planner; he designed a wonderful town where houses had gardens, where streets were broad, and where there were numerous open city squares. And this was simply because he thought about people first.”

  Ordering his realm into neat streets for suitably allocated functions, prudently incorporating brick and open spaces as preventatives to plague and fire, and if his gentlemanly green country town was quickly claimed and reshaped by the merchant class, Penn’s more humane sensibility lingers: an underlying notion, a rational, moderate Quaker predisposition evidencing real thoughtfulness and a reluctance to trust the indolent common run of humanity with their naturally arising cities. Despite a constant temptation to scoff at the utopian futility of our founder we really do know better, we value Penn’s notions and accomplishments. That righteous and rebellious non-conformist pouter pigeon preening himself up there on top of City Hall, just waiting for us to realize he’s been right all along. Our immensely complacent Mr. Penn.

  “In these confusing times we appreciate Mr. Penn and his wisdom. We’re discovering him all over again, this true visionary who honored fundamental human values.” Mr. Penn the futuristic pathfinder.

  David motioned us into his wake, and together we descended the endless flights of steps and platforms, detouring around yellow police tape protecting repairs to the cement, crisscrossing pathways of faded, pinkish fake brick until we got down to the upper rows of the amphitheater. The utilitarian metal skeleton of the stage dominated the space, its back to the water, boxed in by billowing blue plastic printed with ads; it made a tidy enough frame for the Delaware. A few vaguely nautical pennants, blue or yellow, languidly lifted and collapsed against their poles in the mild breeze off the water. Those ran south, occasionally interspersed with American flags moving with the same nominal, insufficient enthusiasm.

  Our little coterie was growing irri
tated and restive; we’d been with David from early morning, through too many overheated, futile hours. But that was entirely for our own reasons, not his, and certainly not to provide an audience for more empty pontification. We’d met at a North Philly elementary school near the border of his district, at the ancient kind of schoolyard with a black iron fence enclosing a cement courtyard swarming with highly alert children pretending to laughing indifference. Trailed David up the shallow entrance steps and into the usual crumbling barracks of an inner city school, another example of incomplete repairs, blocked-off classrooms, buckets and rags against water-stained walls, and the permeating smells of disinfectant, insecticide, bathrooms, and general rot. A place that wore despair like the latest cool fashion, accentuating its hopelessness with enforced gaiety and outrageous promises, with posters and visions and standard exhortations to a better existence, as if the whole point was to elicit rage. And perhaps those children will one day rise up and simultaneously reject both their actual and encouraged lives to create a third avenue of existence, maybe calamitous but at least honest and exciting. Maybe that’s already happening.