New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [389]
He liked Betty. When he looked down at her neat New England face, with its small square jaw and broad brow, and brave spirit, he almost wanted to kiss her—though she probably wouldn’t have welcomed that.
An hour had passed when, glancing across the room, he saw that Sarah was deep in conversation with some young people of her own age, and with an inward sigh, he decided he’d better slip away. He went over though, to say good-bye to her first.
“You’re going home?” She looked disappointed.
“Unless you’d like to eat? But you should stay with your friends.”
“I’d like to eat,” she said. “Are you ready?”
They decided on Sardi’s. It was still early, long before the after-theater crowd would fill the place. They didn’t even have to wait for a table. Charlie always liked the theatrical decor of the place, with its cartoons of actors all round the walls. Out-of-town people might go to Sardi’s because it was so famous, but it was still a lot of fun.
They ordered steaks and red wine, and soon needed a second bottle. They didn’t talk about the show. Charlie told her about his outing with his son, and then they discussed the city in the thirties. He told her his feeling about Rockefeller and Roosevelt, and the ancestral New York spirit.
“But don’t forget Mayor La Guardia,” she reminded him. “He saved New York too.”
“That is absolutely true.” Charlie grinned. “Thank God for the Italians.”
“La Guardia wasn’t Italian.”
“I’m sorry—since when?”
“His father was Italian, but his mother was Jewish. That makes him Jewish. Ask my family.”
“Okay. How do they feel about Robert Moses? Both his parents are Jewish.”
“We hate him.”
“He’s done a lot for the city.”
“That’s true. But my Aunt Ruth lives in the Bronx, and he’s just destroyed the value of her property.” The great Cross Bronx Expressway that Moses was carving across that borough was the most difficult project the masterbuilder had ever undertaken. A lot of people were being displaced, seeing their property values go down, and they didn’t like it. “She says she hopes he breaks his neck.” She grinned. “My family’s close. We support her. Moses will eventually be destroyed.”
“You have a big family?”
“A sister, two brothers. My mother’s family all moved out of New York. Aunt Ruth is my father’s sister.” She paused. “My father had a brother, Herman, who used to live in New York. But he went to Europe before the war and then …” She hesitated.
“He didn’t come back?”
“We don’t talk about him.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, then changed the subject.
“So, your son lives on Staten Island. Does he have a mother?”
“Yes. My ex-wife.”
“Oh. I guess it’s not my business.”
“That’s okay. She and I get along.” He smiled. “You know, when the gallery said you were going to organize Keller’s show, I wasn’t too certain about it.”
“What changed your mind?”
“What you said about Keller’s work and Stieglitz. Of course,” he added, “I still have to discover if you’re competent.”
“I am. And I’m a big fan of Alfred Stieglitz, by the way. Not just his own photography, but all the other shows he arranged. Did you know he organized one of the first exhibitions of Ansel Adams in New York?”
The show of Adams’s astounding photographs of the huge American landscape had been the highlight of Charlie’s year, back in ‘36, shortly before he went to the Spanish Civil War.
“I was there,” he said.
“I also admire his personal life. A man whom Georgia O’Keeffe marries must be pretty special.”
In Charlie’s view, the affair and marriage of the photographer and the great painter had been one of the most significant partnerships in the twentieth-century art world, though it had been quite stormy.
“He wasn’t faithful,” he said.
“He was Stieglitz.” She shrugged. “You’ve got to hand it to him, though. He was nearly fifty-five when he started living with O’Keeffe. And he was sixty-four when he took up with that other girl.”
“Dorothy Norman. I knew her, actually.”
“And she was only twenty-two.”
“Hell of an age difference.”
She looked at him. “You’re only as old as you feel.”