New York - The Novel

man.”
    “He didn’t make it.”
    Charlie Master had a mustache. It was flecked with gray. She couldn’t decide if it reminded her more of Hemingway or Tennessee Williams. It looked good, anyway. He’d mentioned he had a son. Did he have a wife?
    “So what did you do in the Second War?” she asked. “Did you fight in Europe?”
    “Newport.”
    “Newport, Rhode Island?”
    “Has one of the finest deep-water harbors in the country. The British used it during the War of Independence. There was a lot of activity there, especially in ’43 and ’44. Coastal defenses, naval schools, you name it. I was in the Coast Guard.” He smiled. “A return to childhood for me, really. We used to have a cottage there.”
    “Like, one of those palaces, you mean?”
    “No, but it was pretty spacious. After my father lost all his money in the crash, the Newport and city houses were both sold. My parents had to move to an apartment on Park Avenue.”
    She’d already figured that Charlie Master was some kind of blue blood. He had that soft way of speaking. But to move to Park Avenue because you were poor? This was another world.
    “You really knew hardship in the Depression,” she laughed, then regretted her sarcasm.
    He gave her a wry look.
    “It sounds kind of foolish, doesn’t it? But believe me,” he continued more seriously, “at the start of the Depression, it was only a step from considerable wealth to total poverty. There were lines around the block for every job. Wall Street brokers, I mean people you knew, were selling apples on the street. I remember walking with my father once, and he looked at one of those fellows, and he said, ‘A couple of percentage points, Charlie, and that would have been me.’”
    “You believe that?”
    “Oh, absolutely. When my father’s brokerage failed, we could have been bankrupt, completely finished. Did you ever see Central Park during the early years of the Depression? People put up shacks there, little shanty towns, because they had nowhere to live. One day, my father found one of his friends there. He brought him home, and he lived with us for months. I remember him sleeping on a couch. So, we were lucky but, believe me, we knew it.” He nodded thoughtfully. “What about your family? How did you get by?”
    “My crazy family? In my father’s family, one of the children always got an education. So that was my father. He became a dentist. Even in the Depression, people needed to get their teeth fixed. We got by.”
    “That was good.”
    “Not so good. My father didn’t want to be a dentist. He wanted to be a concert pianist. He still keeps a piano in his waiting room, and he practices while he’s waiting for his patients.”
    “Is he a fine pianist?”
    “Yes. But he’s a terrible dentist—my mother would never let him fix our teeth.”
    Sarah didn’t really want to talk about her family, though. She wantedto hear more about his life. So they talked about the thirties for some time. It was just so interesting. And she found she could make him laugh.
    Finally, she had to go back to the gallery. Their next meeting was arranged for the following month, so she supposed she wouldn’t see him until then. But just as they were parting, he remarked: “There’s a new show at the Betty Parsons Gallery next week. Do you go to openings?”
    “Yes,” she said, taken by surprise.
    “Oh, well, maybe I’ll see you there.”
    “Could be.”
    I’ll be there, all right, she thought. Though she still hadn’t found out if he was married. But then, there were things he didn’t know about her, either.

    On Saturday, Charlie took the ferry to Staten Island. It was a fine October day, so he quite enjoyed the ride. He took it every other weekend, usually, to collect little Gorham.
    It hadn’t been his idea to give his son the name. Julie had wanted him named after her grandfather, and his own mother had approved. “I think it’s nice to carry the name of an ancestor who signed the Constitution,” she had declared. Old money, and all that.
    Julie was old money. And she had some money, too. She was blonde and blue-eyed and bland, and her family were Social Register, like the Masters. Mrs. Astor’s famous Four Hundred might be a thing of the past, but the registers, those broader guides to the good old families of America, were very much around. Indeed, it was perfectly possible, Charlie supposed, to lead a fulfilling social life without stirring outside their pages.