Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [42]
We’d board the train at our station, and my mother would let me have the window seat so that I could gawp at the Hudson River, at the sheer rock face of the Palisades, at the expanse of the George Washington Bridge as we traveled into Manhattan. If there was a seat free, I would move to the other side of the train as we approached the city. I tried to imagine the people who lived in the tenements by the tracks. I peered down the long uptown avenues. I was awed by the tall apartment buildings and wondered, as we clicked along, if anyone actually used the balconies twenty-five stories up. We’d enter a long tunnel and then emerge to the cavernous Grand Central Station. I’d try to keep step with my mother’s clicking heels as we crossed the stone floor. She would not let go of my hand until we entered the revolving door of my father’s office building.
The lobby of my father’s office was decorated with models in glass cases of the buildings the company had designed. Intricate and precise, with matchstick figures and bushes no bigger than my thumbnail, they were miniature universes into which I wanted to climb. My father would walk out to the lobby and make a fuss, even though we’d just seen him at breakfast. His white shirt would billow slightly over his belt, and his long sleeves would be rolled. A tie would be snug inside his collar. In exchanges as ritualized as those of a church service, he would give my mother a kiss and tell her not to spend too much money; she would laugh and tell me to be a good girl.
As my father and I walked along a corridor of cubicles, secretaries and draftsmen rolled out into the hallway to say hello or give me a high five. I remember a woman named Penny who kept hard candies in a jar and who always invited me into her cubicle to sample a few. I especially liked Angus, my father’s boss, who would set me on a high stool in front of a draftsman’s table and give me a set of colored pencils that had never been opened. He’d also give me a T square and a job: I’d have to draw a house or a school or the front of a store. I worked at these tasks with dedication, and the praise was always extravagant, both from Angus and from my father. “How old are you again?” Angus would ask with what appeared to be complete earnestness. “We might have to hire you right out of junior high school.”
Sometimes I’d wander into my father’s office and pretend to be a secretary while he was on the phone or at his drawing table. At noon he would slide his arms into the silky lining of his jacket and we’d go to lunch. We ate at a deli where I could order cheese blintzes and a bowl of coleslaw. The desserts rotated in a glass case, and I remember the agony of trying to choose among the cherry cheesecake or the éclairs or the chocolate cream pie. My father, who normally never ate dessert, would get one for himself so that I could at least taste two. After lunch we’d go to the zoo in Central Park or to a bookstore where I was allowed to pick out a book. My father would be Rob in the office, Mr. Dillon in the deli, and a freshly minted Dad to me, sophisticated and fascinating in his white shirts and suits, his overcoat swinging open as we walked the sidewalks, his arm up, finger pointed, signaling for a taxi.
By three thirty a slight sensation of fatigue and boredom would begin to overtake me, but my mother was usually prompt at four o’clock. She’d arrive, shopping bags in tow, flushed and slightly breathless from her day out. I always had the sensation she’d been running. The shopping bags would be exotic: some had shiny pink and white stripes; others were black with gold lettering. My father would pretend horror at the excess, but I knew he didn’t really mind. Once, when they thought I’d left the room to go to the bathroom and were standing with their backs to the door, my mother took an item out and slipped it from its tissue wrap.