A Week as Andrea Benstock
- Автор: Блок Лоуренс
- Год: 1975
- Язык: английский
- Год: Arbor House
- ISBN: 978-0-87795-100-1
- Жанр: Романы для взрослых
Электронная книга - «A Week as Andrea Benstock». Краткое содержание книги:
After a moment she approached one of the drivers. He was a pug-faced man around forty, wearing a black top hat and an ancient cutaway morning coat. His horse was also wearing a hat, a straw with holes cut for its ears, and with a nosegay of flowers tucked into the hatband.
“Pardon me,” she said. “Could you tell me how much a ride costs?”
He smiled. One of his lower front teeth was missing and she tried not to stare at it. “Give you a nice long ride around the park for twenty dollars, ma’am.”
“Do you just go through the park?”
“Anywhere you like. Just like a regular cab except there’s no meter ticking away at you. And we don’t pollute the air. Horses smell a whole lot better than cars, don’t they?” He smiled again, and she returned the smile. “We’re licensed to operate throughout the five boroughs, just like any other taxi. ‘Course in practical terms we don’t go outside of Manhattan. Imagine old Gypsy here clip-cloppin’ through the tunnel! But we got the right, according to the law. Where do you want to go?”
She considered it, but only briefly. “Maybe later,” she said. “If my husband’s interested.”
“You bring him around. Little ride through the park turns a man romantic all over again.” And he winked broadly at her, like a low character from Elizabethan comedy.
She walked down Fifth Avenue toward Bergdorf’s. Twenty dollars — had it always been that expensive? No wonder none of her dates had made good on that particular promise.
Would Mark take her? Certainly the expense wouldn’t bother him. Twenty dollars now was a far less significant amount to her than it had been when she had lived alone in the city. Their room at the Essex House cost almost twice that per night, and dinner last night must have run around thirty dollars with the tip. Of course the bulk of their expenses would be charged to Mark’s firm and ultimately paid by the client on whose behalf he was making the trip. But he was prepared for her to spend a few hundred dollars of real money on clothes today, and he certainly wouldn’t balk at indulging a twenty-dollar whim if she wanted to ride around for half an hour in a carriage.
Maybe that night. Maybe after dinner and after the show. They could afford the twenty dollars, and they could afford to do tourist things. Because she did not live in this city now. She was a tourist. She could go to the Statue of Liberty, she could look down at the city from the top of the Empire State Building. These were not necessarily things she wanted to do, but she could do them if she wished.
It was strange, the realization that she was indeed a tourist. She didn’t know whether she liked it or not.
There was nothing at Bergdorf’s. She kept trying things on and couldn’t find anything she liked at all. She didn’t really need anything, but for some reason or other she felt determined to buy something, if only she could find something to buy. As if she needed something tangible in hand to justify how she was spending this particular day.
She gave up finally and was almost out of the store when she thought to pick up something for Mark’s mother. She selected a box of monogrammed handkerchiefs. She wasn’t sure that it was necessary to bring a gift home for her mother-in-law but she guessed that it would be good family politics. Although they got along well enough, she was fairly certain that Adele Benstock did not like her very much. That was fine with Andrea, who did not like Mrs. Benstock at all. There was no need for them to like one another, but there was every reason why they ought to get along well together, and she found it effortless to get on with her mother-in-law. Mrs. Benstock might never like her, but she would nonetheless feel that Andrea was an excellent wife for Mark, a superb mother for Robin, and, all in all, an eminently satisfactory daughter-in-law.
Why didn’t she like Mark’s mother? Not because the woman was narrow-minded and stupid and uncultured. She was all of these things, but that didn’t explain Andrea’s feeling toward her. Harry Benstock was at least as objectionable in all those areas; if he was not precisely stupid, the lout animal cunning he possessed was no more endearing than his wife’s stupidity. Harry Benstock was, in almost every respect, a genuinely despicable man. And yet, although Andrea did despise him to an extent, she could not help somehow liking him in spite of himself. There was a toughness, a feisty quality to him, and she responded to it, even admired it.
Of course now that she had bought the handkerchiefs for her mother-in-law she was locked; she would have to buy presents for her own parents, and for her father in-law. Perhaps it would be simpler all around to throw the handkerchiefs away. For that matter, she could keep them herself; there was that to be said for having the same initial as one’s mother-in-law.
She wandered on down Fifth as far as Saks, taking her time along the way, examining store windows and passersby. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, and she realized that she herself was walking quite slowly.
How long had it been since she had done any real walking? She drove almost everywhere these days. She occasionally took Robin for walks in the neighborhood, but walking as a means of getting from one place to another was no longer a part of her life. No one walked in the suburbs. Everything was too far away, with nothing to look at en route but other people’s houses. It was much easier to pop the baby into his car seat and drive wherever she was going. She hardly ever went downtown, and all the stores in her area were either situated on shopping plazas or had their own parking lots.
People in the suburbs only walked behind things, she thought. She walked behind a carriage or stroller, or behind a shopping cart. Mark walked behind a lawnmower during the warm months and a snow thrower in the winter.
She tried on three dresses at Saks and found one that would do. It was a navy sheath, cut low in front but not too low. She could have found the same dress in Buffalo but decided to buy it anyway. She told the salesgirl she would take it with her, then changed her mind. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just something extra to carry. Would you mind sending it? And—” handing her the hankies — “could you possibly tuck this into the package? Thanks.”
She stopped for lunch at a delicatessen on Forty-ninth between Fifth and Sixth. She ate a corned-beef sandwich and drank a bottle of celery tonic. The corned beef was no better than what she bought regularly at Mastman’s, but the celery tonic was a beverage she had had only in New York. Was it available in Buffalo? She didn’t know, had never looked for it, had never heard of anybody buying it.
After lunch she signed a petition. She had returned to Fifth Avenue and was heading uptown toward the Museum of Modern Art. At the corner of Fifty-first street a boy with an embryonic beard was exhorting people to help stop the war. She had passed him before without a second thought. Now, for some reason, she stopped.
“LBJ’s sending fifty thousand more,” the boy was chanting. “Help us tell him how we feel. LBJ’s sending fifty thousand more. Help us tell him—”