New York - The Novel

parks.
    Charlie wasn’t sure. New York’s public transport was pretty good, he reckoned, and in this new age of the motor car, the city would have come to a standstill without the new roads. The criticism about the parks and the black neighborhoods might be true, but the layout of the roads was magnificent. When he drove up the West Side’s Henry Hudson Parkway, which swept one gloriously along the great river all the way past the George Washington Bridge, Charlie could forgive Moses almost anything.
    The question was, he thought, as they pulled up at his mother’s building on Park, how was he going to explain all that to his son?
    The white-gloved doorman took them to the elevator, and Rose was waiting for them at her apartment door. She might be over eighty, but she could have passed for sixty-five. She welcomed them warmly and they all went into the living room.
    It was a nice apartment. According to the way they counted these things in the city, it had six rooms. Living room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a maid’s room off the kitchen. The three bathroomsweren’t counted. Respectable enough for a widowed lady, but not quite what a family like his should have. Charlie would have preferred an eight—that gave you another bedroom or library and a second maid’s room. The rooms got bigger too, with an eight. When they’d been married, Charlie and Julie had had an eight, though not on Park.
    Of course, if he’d gone into Wall Street, if he’d made money like some of his friends, Charlie might have got one of the big apartments on Park or Fifth by now. Ten rooms, fifteen. They were huge, really like mansions, with four or five maids’ rooms for your staff.
    Charlie had an apartment on Seventy-eighth and Third these days. Not far away from his mother. Seventy-eighth was a good street, and the apartments had big living rooms like artists’ studios, so it was quite interesting for a single man. It didn’t have a doorman, though. One really should have a doorman.
    Rose was good with children. She showed little Gorham photographs of his grandfather and great-grandfather. The boy liked that. There were pictures of the Newport house as well. Things to remind the little fellow where he really belonged.
    At noon, they went out and took a taxi across to the Plaza Hotel. In the Palm Court, they were ushered to a table. He could see that Gorham was impressed with the Palm Court.
    “Sometimes I walk over to the Carlyle,” said Rose. “But I like coming here. It’s nice being near the park.”
    She picked at a salad while her grandson, having dutifully eaten a fishcake, tucked into a chocolate eclair. They talked about the school he’d started at.
    “When you’re older,” Rose said, “you’ll go to Groton.”
    Julie hadn’t given any trouble about that. They’d all agreed. To be precise, Charlie recalled, his mother and his ex-wife had agreed. He just had to pay the bills. He’d have liked Gorham to go to one of the day schools in the city, but you couldn’t do that easily from Staten Island, and having the boy live with him, or his grandmother, assuming she was alive by then, seemed a bit difficult.
    “Did you go to Groton, Dad?” the little boy asked.
    “No,” said Rose, “but he probably should have.”
    It was a fine place of course. The Massachusetts boarding school was closely modeled on Cheltenham College in England, and its Latin motto said it all: “Serve God and Rule” Charlie translated it. Muscular Christianity.Episcopal, of course. Good, sound education, nothing too intellectual. Plenty of sport. Cold showers. Like the rulers of Britain’s empire, the owners of America’s great fortunes mustn’t get soft.
    “He’ll meet the right sort of people there,” Charlie said cheerfully. Roosevelt, Auchincloss, Morgan, Whitney, du Pont, Adams, Harriman, Grew … People with names like that went to Groton.
    “Wasn’t there somebody called Peabody there?” asked Gorham.
    “Yes, Gorham.” Charlie smiled. “He founded it. He was headmaster there for fifty years. Well done.”
    “It’s not Peabody, dear,” said Rose. “It’s pronounced Pee-bdy.”
    “Oh, Mother,” said Charlie with a shrug. “At his age …”
    “Pee-bdy,” said his mother firmly.
    It amused Charlie how old money in America had somewhat adopted the English custom of leaving verbal traps for the socially unwary. Old money pronounced certain names in ways that discreetly separated them from the rest.