Glimmering

Below them stretched the grounds of the little estate, two acres upon a hillside overlooking Untermeyer Park and, below that, the Hudson. The park had years before fallen into decay. It was haunted now by crack dealers and fellahin, teenage runaways who drifted to the City, then north, until they reached the no-man’s-land that was Yonkers and the southernmost reaches of Westchester County. From Jack’s balcony at Lazyland one could glimpse the ruins of other estates, mansions that had belonged to Van Cortlandts and Van Rensselaers and McGuires and Phillipses. All had been abandoned. Those who could afford to had fled. Those who could not had been driven out by the gangs, by the drive-by shootings and random bombings, the murderous attacks of fellahin and cranks; or by the sight of mange-ridden coyotes staggering north from the wastelands of the Bronx, and south from the woodlands bordering the Saw Mill River and the Sprain Brook parkways. Two months ago the house nearest to Lazyland, a shingle-style Victorian whose elaborate dormers could once be glimpsed through the new green of oaks and tulip trees, had been forsaken by the maharani who bought it only five years earlier. Jack had watched her go, and the sad small parade of sons and housekeepers who followed the stooped middle-aged woman in her yellow sari and high-heeled sandals. The men got into their cars, the housekeepers clambered into three rented Ryder trucks; the maharani and her eldest son and his wife stood for several minutes staring up at the gilded silhouette of their manse. Then they left, for Canada, Jack thought. Two nights later their house burned to the ground; only one fire truck responded to the emergency call. Now Lazyland stood alone upon the hill.

Jack sighed, poured the last bit of champagne into Jule’s glass. All about them trees rustled in the gentle night wind from the river. The air was fragrant from the flowers blooming in the grass below; but there was also the fishy reek of the Hudson, the charred damp smell of all those other ruined mansions, and the omnipresent scent of marijuana smoke and carrion from the fellahin encampments. Overhead a few faint stars shone in the deepening violet sky; far below the Hudson stretched, a swath of black and indigo flecked here and there with gold.

“Nice,” Jule murmured, sipping his champagne. He looked at his old friend and nodded. “You oughta do this more often, Jackie. Get out more. Or have people in.”

Jack smiled sadly. “All the people I used to have in are dead, Julie.” He turned and leaned against the balcony rail, stared for several minutes at the twilight. “Do you remember my fourteenth birthday?” he finally asked. “At Saint Bartholomew’s?”

“Was that when you and Leonard—”

“That was sixteen. No—don’t you remember? The world was supposed to end,” Jack said wistfully, turning to stare down at the unruly patches of daffodils that were like a yellow mist settled onto the lawn. “A two-headed cow was born somewhere, Mahopac, I think, and there was something about a baby born with a caul. The Herald Statesmen had a big article on it, about how everyone thought the world was going to end on Good Friday. March 26, 1971. And that was my birthday.”

Jule shook his head. “I don’t remember. Did we do something? I mean, was there a party?”

“No.” Jack tapped the rim of his glass against his lower lip. “That was the whole thing. It was this beautiful, beautiful day—like today, actually—and I was with you and a couple of other people. Don’t you remember? We all had to go to afternoon Mass in the auditorium, because it was Good Friday, and afterward there was like fifteen minutes before the next period started, and so we sat outside on that little hill overlooking the lake. Everyone was there, I mean, practically the whole school was outside, and we all just lay on the grass. I don’t really remember anything about it at all, except that someone gave me a Hostess cupcake with a candle in it and we were talking about how the world might end.

“But I thought, You know, this is it—I am perfectly happy. Right now, on my birthday, on this beautiful day with my friends—if this really is the end of the world, I don’t even care, because right now I am perfectly happy.”

“And was it?” asked Jule. “The end of the world?”

Jack smiled. “No.” He set his empty champagne flute on the broad railing and turned to leave. “And I’ve always been kind of sorry.”