The Things They Left Behind
The Things They Left Behind
The things I want to tell you about—the ones they left behind—showed up in my
apartment in August of 2002. I’m sure of that, because I found most of them not long
after I helped Paula Robeson with her air conditioner. Memory always needs a marker,
and that’s mine. She was a children’s book illustrator, good-looking (hell, fine-
looking), husband in import-export. A man has a way of remembering occasions
when he’s actually able to help a good-looking lady in distress (even one who keeps
assuring you she’s “very married”); such occasions are all too few. These days the
would-be knight errant usually just makes matters worse.
She was in the lobby, looking frustrated, when I came down for an afternoon walk. I
said Hi, howya doin’, the way you do to other folks who share your building, and she
asked me in an exasperated tone that stopped just short of querulousness why the
super had to be on vacation now. I pointed out that even cowgirls get the blues and
even supers go on vacation; that August, furthermore, was an extremely logical month
to take time off. August in New York (and in Paris, mon ami) finds psychoanalysts,
trendy artists, and building superintendents mighty thin on the ground.
She didn’t smile. I’m not sure she even got the Tom Robbins reference (obliqueness is
the curse of the reading class). She said it might be true about August being a good
month to take off and go to the Cape or Fire Island, but her damned apartment was
just about burning up and the damned air conditioner wouldn’t so much as burp. I
asked her if she’d like me to take a look, and I remember the glance she gave me—
those cool, assessing gray eyes. I remember thinking that eyes like that probably saw
quite a lot. And I remember smiling at what she asked me: Are you safe? It reminded
me of that movie, not Lolita (thinking about Lolita, sometimes at two in the morning, came later) but the one where Laurence Olivier does the impromptu dental work on
Dustin Hoffman, asking him over and over again, Is it safe?
I’m safe, I said. Haven’t attacked a woman in over a year. I used to attack two or
three a week, but the meetings are helping.
A giddy thing to say, but I was in a fairly giddy mood. A summer mood. She gave me
another look, and then she smiled. Put out her hand. Paula Robeson, she said. It was the left hand she put out—not normal, but the one with the plain gold band on it. I
think that was probably on purpose, don’t you? But it was later that she told me about
her husband being in import-export. On the day when it was my turn to ask her for
help.
In the elevator, I told her not to expect too much. Now, if she’d wanted a man to find
out the underlying causes of the New York City Draft Riots, or to supply a few
amusing anecdotes about the creation of the small-pox vaccine, or even to dig up
quotes on the sociological ramifications of the TV remote control (the most important
invention of the last fifty years, in my ’umble opinion), I was the guy.
Research is your game, Mr. Staley? she asked as we went up in the slow and clattery
elevator.
I admitted that it was, although I didn’t add that I was still quite new to it. Nor did I
ask her to call me Scott—that would have spooked her all over again. And I certainly
didn’t tell her that I was trying to forget all I’d once known about rural insurance.
That I was, in fact, trying to forget quite a lot of things, including about two dozen
faces.
You see, I may be trying to forget, but I still remember quite a lot. I think we all do
when we put our minds to it (and sometimes, rather more nastily, when we don’t). I
even remember something one of those South American novelists said—you know,
the ones they call the Magical Realists? Not the guy’s name, that’s not important, but