35. EMPIRE STATE
They ate more cheeseburgers, rode in Checker cabs, walked the busy streets of New York. Dunningham spent his mornings at the Metropolitan Museum and afternoons with Joe Borgese and his friends. Henry and Glenn went to the top of the Empire State Building, saw the Statue of Liberty, shopped at Macy’s, bought a Yankees T-shirt for Glenn, a mug and guidebook for Sarah. Glenn was assembling a box of presents for her, a treasure chest for his missing mother. In the evenings, the three of them went to a movie or sat in the hotel room listening to Henry’s cassettes, watching TV, or playing cards. Their favourite, though, was charades. Glenn frowned, then signaled film, two words, and acted it out, shooting, riding his steed, shouting silent orders to invisible troops. Henry knew the answer, but it wasn’t his turn. They watched the boy take aim, shoot, gallop his horse, swagger like John Wayne across the room—from the door past the beds to the single armchair where Dunningham sat, feigning puzzlement. A moment later: “Of course. The Alamo.” Glenn shook hands with Dunningham, hugged his father. The three of them laughing, breaking into song: “Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.”
Glenn was alternately enthralled and anxious. Wide-eyed as they drove down the FDR Drive alongside the East River and Welfare Island. But also fretful, distracted, prone to spells of immobility—on his bed, in a chair, in the bathroom. They worried Henry, these episodes, a sudden solitary stillness, as if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open. Then, one day, the questions bubbled out. They were eating breakfast at their favourite diner on Lex.
“Why was Mommy arrested?”
“They just did it to scare her.”
“They didn’t house arrest her, like you?”
“No. She’s in jail because they found some book or magazine. Can you imagine that? In America you can read whatever you like. But she’s fine, I promise. Nana and Grampa have been to visit her, our friends too. They’ll let her out soon.”
“When?”
“At most, in about eighty more days. Probably less.”
“And then she’ll come here?”
“Yes.”
He stared dejectedly at his plate of pancakes. “I’ll be ten by then. She’ll miss my birthday.”
A FEW days later, Henry went down to the lobby to buy a newspaper before breakfast. He was about to enter the newsagent’s kiosk when he heard a familiar accent. A South African man in a grey suit was asking the concierge how much a double room cost and whether his friends had checked in yet. Henry had used a fake name when he’d registered, and as far as he could tell, the young concierge didn’t volunteer the names of any guests.
Still, he was spooked. Back in the room, he waited for Glenn to go to the bathroom before speaking to Dick.
“You don’t know he was looking for one of us,” Dunningham said.
“No, but he may have been.”
“Could you really hear them properly, though? Are you sure he wasn’t Dutch or Australian? Hen, aren’t you being a bit paranoid?”
“Maybe.”
“No reciprocity for political crimes. They can’t arrest us. What’re they going to do, shoot us?”
“Maybe we should move. We can’t stay in this hotel forever.”
“Well, I suppose that’s true,” Dunningham conceded.
They left later that morning. Took a taxi to the Blakely Hotel. Glenn was tired, cranky. He didn’t want the tiny bit of routine, the shred of home he’d established, to be taken from him. He was even less happy when, two days later, they packed up again and ferried their suitcases, an electric kettle, and three bags of groceries to a one-bedroom apartment on Sullivan Street, which Joe Borgese had arranged for them. To lift Glenn’s spirits, Henry suggested a matinee, and so they all went off to see The Great Escape. Afterwards they walked through Washington Square and listened to the folk singers and looked at the buildings and imagined what each one would look like if it were a skyscraper, stretched three, four, ten times taller, soaring into the sky. They cooked Chef Boy-Ar-Dee ravioli in the little galley kitchen, and Dunningham and Henry drank red wine.
THE NEXT day they bought posters to brighten the little apartment—a Formula One racing car and a large black-and-white photograph of the Empire State Building rising from the city streets, massive and majestic. After they’d pinned them to the walls, they sat on the couch in the narrow living room, admiring their handiwork and sipping root beer in front of the window fan.
“Are we going to go home?” the boy asked.
“We are home.” Henry didn’t know what else to say. Nothing that was true would comfort the boy.
DUNNINGHAM ANNOUNCED that he would be returning to London in a couple of days. Daisy was waiting for him. That night they went to Breakfast at Tiffany’s, even though it wasn’t really appropriate for a nine-year-old. When the three of them walked out into the hot evening on West Eighth Street, Henry realised that each of them was in love with Audrey Hepburn, and each was missing a distant woman—mother, lover, wife.
“CAN WE get a dog when Mom comes?”
“Yes, good idea. We’ll get a dog.”
“Can we go and visit her if she doesn’t come soon?”
“No, we can’t go and visit. We’ll have to wait. We can buy nice things for her.”
“I miss Janey.”
“I know. I miss her too.”
“Is she in jail with Mommy? Or did she go home?”
“She’s at her house, I think. Or with friends. Not with Mommy.”
“Don’t you even know?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. But I’m sure Mommy knows.”
“Why don’t you care about anyone?”
“Why would you say that, Glenn?”
“Because.”
“I do care, of course I do. I care about you. I love you. More than anything.”
“You don’t. You don’t keep your promises. You say things, but you don’t mean them. You just leave people behind.”
He tried to hug him, but the boy drew back and pushed his palms against Henry’s chest, not punching, just pressing, as if something inside Henry were expanding and had to be contained.
“Leaving you and Mommy, that was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t want to. You must know that. And I do keep my promises. I, we, we’ve had to make some very difficult choices. This is not what we wanted, me and Mommy. I had to leave home. It was either that or spend a long time in jail.”
The pushing had stopped now. Glenn’s arms hung at his sides.
“Because you want black people to be free.”
“Because I want all people to be free.”
“Can we write to Janey and then she can write to us?”
“That’s a great idea. We’ll find out her address and send her a letter, maybe even send her a present from New York. She’d like that.”
Even as he said it, he knew they wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t find her address, and if they did he wouldn’t mail the letter. He didn’t know how postage stamps and post office codes worked. It didn’t matter, anyway. It was too big a risk to take. And so he knew that he would lie to his son again, even though he was loath to do it. What other option was there?
“It’s not fair.” Glenn’s face crumpled. “Nobody said that . . . I just want to see them. Mommy and Janey and my friends and everybody.”
Henry wrapped his arms around Glenn and the boy allowed himself to be hugged now, and they breathed in, breathed out together, not moving, just breathing together on the brown couch.
“I would do anything for you, Glenn. Anything. I never ever want to lie to you or break a promise. Okay?”
“Okay.”
A small sound, almost a whimper, as Glenn shuddered and his chest thrust forward and then relaxed again, and Henry held him, the boy’s hot, tear-streaked face on his neck. He felt they were floating, he and Glenn, weightless yet also heavy, as if the space between them and the ceiling were pushing down on them, leaden air, compressing and also bearing them up.
DICK’S LAST night, they went with Joe Borgese to an Italian restaurant on MacDougal Street and then to Gerde’s. “Don’t let the kid get drunk,” the guy at the door mumbled as they entered the bar. The bartender poured Glenn a root beer in a pint glass and Dick and Henry and Joe drank beer. A little later Blind Boy Grunt took the stage, a harmonica around his neck.
“That’s Bob Dylan,” Borgese said, leaning in.
“Where?”
“On stage.”
“I thought that was Blind Boy something or other?” Dick asked.
“Same guy.”
“Bloody marvellous. Bob Dylan. Hen, you hear that?”
On stage, the scrawny guy in jeans and suede boots began strumming his guitar and blowing his harmonica, kicking the back of his right boot to the beat. “Don’t the clouds look lonesome shining across the sea.” When he finished the song, he waved to Glenn and Glenn waved back, and Henry ordered him another root beer and ruffled his hair.
Walking home along Bleecker Street, Henry told Glenn the story of his Great-Uncle Zalman who’d sailed on his cello down a river in Latvia, to freedom.
“WILL JOHN Glenn orbit the earth again?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure there’ll be another mission. We’ll go to the library and find out.”
“Does Mommy miss me?”
“Of course she does. You’re her big boy. She loves you and wishes she was with us right now.”
“Where is she? Where is the prison? What’s it called?”
“Johannesburg. It’s called the Old Fort.”
“Will she bring my things? I want my models and my soldiers and my Batman comics and my soccer jersey.”
“She’ll bring some of them.”
“This lady’s flat smells funny.”
FUNDS WERE running low. The wad of banknotes Dunningham had pressed on him would last another month or two, maybe three if they scrimped and saved. Henry spoke to Bob Gornick, who arranged some meetings with law firms. One of the lawyers he met suggested he interview at IBM. It was time to give Glenn a proper home, and Henry liked the idea of moving out to the suburbs. They’d set up a house, get Glenn into school, and when Sarah arrived everything would be ready. She’d fit in, like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. They’d go to the beach, visit Florida or California. They’d have their things shipped from Johannesburg, and then it would really feel like home. They’d have another baby. It was Gornick who suggested that Henry speak to a dean at Stony Brook University.